Blood of the Living Dead
by Llywela
Summary: When Sir Lancelot is restored to life in 17th century France for reasons he cannot fathom, he builds a new life as the Musketeer Aramis, bit by painstaking bit – but who could have brought him here, and why? More importantly, what might happen if and when they catch up with him? And can he rely on the support of his comrades when the truth comes out?
1. Chapter 1

**Title** : Blood of the Living Dead  
 **Show** : The Musketeers / Merlin  
 **Characters** : Lancelot, Aramis, Captain Treville, Athos, Porthos, D'Artagnan, Merlin, Queen Anne, Constance Bonacieux, mentions of various others  
 **Rating** : PG  
 **Summary** : When Sir Lancelot is restored to life in 17th century France for reasons he cannot fathom, he builds a new life as the Musketeer Aramis, bit by painstaking bit – but who could have brought him here, and why? More importantly, what might happen if and when they catch up with him? And can he rely on the support of his comrades when the truth comes out?  
 **Disclaimer** : Both _Merlin_ and _The Musketeers_ belong to the BBC, and also to legend and Alexandre Dumas respectively. I have borrowed them for this story and am making no profit from this.  
 **Author's Note** : Inspired by the _Watcher of the Eternal Flame_ series by Queen_of_Moons67, with many thanks both for the idea and the permission to use it. This story is set post-series for Merlin and weaves through pre-series and season one continuity for _The Musketeers_. I've taken a few liberties, but would class this as Universe Alteration, rather than Alternate Universe. And yes, for simplicity's sake, I have chosen to overlook the complexity of linguistic (and other) development over the space of a millennium.

Life – and consciousness – returned in a rush of sensation: blood pounding through veins, blinding light. Wet. Cold.

So very cold.

Sir Lancelot, Knight of Camelot, regained his senses to find himself lying spread-eagled in the snow, shirt and britches soaked through. No armour. No weapons. No cloak. No boots.

Alive.

But he was dead. He should be dead. He remembered dying, and the memory of it ached somewhere deep within his soul.

Then he remembered that he'd been brought back once before, and that memory jolted him to his feet, shivering from more than just the cold.

He was alone. Exposed. Vulnerable.

He'd died once before, and he'd been resurrected once before as no more than a half-man, a mere shade of his former self. The witch Morgana had used him for evil, used him to hurt the people he loved best in the world – a puppet on a string, aware all the while and yet helpless to act, powerless to prevent the witch using him as she would, violating every principle for which he'd ever stood, then discarded once his usefulness was at an end, left to die a second death.

The thought of being used for such evil purpose again filled him with horror…yet the difference between _this_ resurrection and _that_ was a tangible sensation, a thing he could _feel_ pulsing through his veins. His thoughts were his own, and so was his body. Unlike the last, this resurrection was real, true, and complete. But who could have done it – and for what purpose?

Where was he?

Body wracked with shivers, he slowly turned this way and that, looking all around at a snow-draped landscape that was utterly unfamiliar to him. This was not Camelot. It was nowhere he knew.

There wasn't a soul anywhere in sight.

The cold was seeping into his bones, weighing him down like a blanket of lead, muffling all thought – and, worse, all motivation. This resurrection would, he dimly realised, prove even more short-lived than the last if he failed to find shelter soon.

Where such shelter might be found, he had no way of knowing.

Forcing his cold-numbed limbs to move, Lancelot picked a direction and started to walk.

Sheer chance and the kindness of strangers saved him, his stumbling feet bringing him at last to an isolated farm, where he collapsed senseless and half-frozen at the feet of the elderly farmer and his wife.

It was much later, swathed in blankets before a roaring fire, that he began to look around and took note of the difference between this place and all that he had known – the architecture, the furnishings, the clothes…everything. At first, he thought it merely _foreign_ – the farmers spoke French, a tongue he knew only a little; it was clear he was no longer in Albion – but over the course of a faltering conversation an impossible truth was impressed upon him, overwhelming in its magnitude.

Lancelot had died in the 6th century A.D. He had returned to life in the 17th century.

How was it possible? Over a thousand years, a full millennium, in the space between one heartbeat and the next. It could not be – and yet it was, and the weight of it robbed him of all breath, all sense, and sent him reeling.

The combination of cold, damp and shock led, perhaps inevitably, to fever. Recovering only slowly, Lancelot remained on the farm all winter, perfecting his French, repaying the old couple for their care and concern with hard labour, as soon as he was able, and learning from them as much as he could about the strange new world of the 17th century into which he had been reborn.

The old people had never heard of Camelot, or even of Albion – the land of Lancelot's birth had, it seemed, passed beyond the memory of man, altered beyond all recognition. Even the name was no longer the same.

Everything he knew was gone. Everyone he'd ever known and loved was gone.

He was alone, the last living relic of a bygone age, and the knowledge of it weighed heavy on his heart, a terrible, crushing grief, while the question of who could have restored him to life – and why – nagged at him, insoluble.

Why had his mysterious benefactor not shown his or her self, whether for good or for ill? Why restore his life only to abandon him to the snow?

The farmer's wife believed that God had brought him to them, in place of the son they'd lost, many years earlier. It was, Lancelot decided, as good an explanation as any – and a great deal more comforting than his own dark fears.

He could not, however, remain on the farm all his days, grateful though he was for the kindness of the old couple. No, if his restored life was his own, then he intended to make the most of it – and if it were not his own, if some sinister price was still to fall due…well, then again, he intended to make the most of the opportunity he'd been given and fight with all his might to prevent ever again being used for evil ends.

The coming of spring brought Lancelot to Paris, the vast and vibrant capital city of the land in which he'd been reborn. He was learning fast, transforming himself into a native of France, having determined that, if his mysterious benefactor should have any ill intent, the simplest means of avoiding it was to _not be found_.

It was with this thought in mind that he took a new name – or borrowed one, rather – since his own was too distinctive to retain if he wished to remain hidden, redolent of a long-gone place and time that could never be again. Wishing to remember and honour the kindly old couple who'd taken him in and nursed him back to health, as well as hoping to gain some semblance of legitimacy, he borrowed the name of their dead son, René d'Aramitz, and from there it was but a small step to a new identity with which to embrace his new life.

And so it was that Lancelot became Aramis.

Aramis became a soldier. Inevitable, perhaps: perfecting his sword craft had been a primary focus of Lancelot's life, and becoming a knight his lifelong dream, the desire to serve and protect far too deeply ingrained to give up now, while the sense of belonging offered by the regiment was especially alluring in his present situation, cast adrift in a strange new world. His skills were centuries old, yet not as outdated as he'd first feared, and stood him in good stead as he built his new life, one small piece at a time.

Love of sword craft was soon overtaken, however, by a new love: the musket. The long-range weaponry of this new age was a revelation to him, and he threw himself into the mastery of it wholeheartedly, fast earning himself a name as the keenest shot in the army.

It was this reputation that brought Captain Treville to his door.


	2. Chapter 2

2

The Musketeer regiment was still newly-formed when Captain Jean-Armand de Treville first encountered the young soldier known only as Aramis, an encounter that left him questioning his own sanity.

The young man's reputed proficiency with firearms had inspired Treville to seek him out. His newly-formed regiment of Musketeers was to be an elite, the best of the best, and Aramis had made quite a name for himself, in a very short span of time. Quite where he came from no one seemed to know, but Treville was not concerned with the origins of the men under his command, only their loyalty and skill. Aramis had arrived in the ranks seemingly out of nowhere and made a name for himself almost at once: keen-eyed sharpshooter, expert swordsman, and he could hold his own in a fist-fight also, by all accounts, as well as taking a keen interest in field medicine, which was always of use in any regiment. He was exactly the sort of man Treville wanted for his Musketeers.

It was the face Treville had not bargained on, a face that was hauntingly familiar for reasons he could not quite place. He'd never met the man before, of that much he was certain. So how was it that the face of this stranger should prove so evocative, stirring long-forgotten memories that refused to be pinned down?

Treville responded to the mystery the only way he knew how – he shook it off, told himself he was imagining things, and re-focused on the task at hand, which was the recruitment of a highly skilled soldier for the newly-formed Musketeer regiment.

Aramis jumped at the chance.

Having cast a wide net in his recruitment campaign, over the weeks and months that followed Treville watched his men closely as the broad assortment of recruits slowly formed themselves into an elite, the best of the best, just as he'd intended. Among them, Aramis stood out – although perhaps, Treville had to admit to himself, primarily because he still could not quite place the young man's face or understand why it seemed so familiar to him.

Or perhaps he'd have stood out anyway. Aramis was everything Treville had hoped he'd be, living up to his reputation in no small measure. He was popular among the men, as well, a man of wit and humour, open-hearted and sociable, who clearly relished the sense of brotherhood he'd found in the regiment.

He was also a walking contradiction – on the surface so light-hearted and merry, with great lust for life and an apparent determination to make the most of every minute of it, but lurking beneath the surface were sorrow and recklessness, careless disregard for the very life he appeared to cherish so much. Likewise, for all his affability, he was nonetheless extremely guarded, allowing his new friends in the regiment to get so close but no further, holding the whole world at arm's length.

And always that haunting sense of familiarity about the face.

Hard to say quite what it was that caused the memory to fall into place at last – a look or gesture, perhaps, some turn of the head that fell just right and caused Treville to question his sanity all over again.

He took an immediate leave of absence and set off for the family home he'd not visited in years, spent a long afternoon digging through dusty old trunks that had lain undisturbed for decades, until at last he found it: a sheaf of papers, yellowed and crackling with age, conjuring powerful sense-memories of long-ago childhood days.

Monsieur Ambrose, the man had been called – a tutor, hired for the improvement of the child Jean-Armand's mind. A young man of wiry build with brilliant blue eyes and a shock of wild black hair, he had been clumsy and careless and captivating, turning lessons into games and games into lessons, bringing all manner of laughter and excitement into the life of the young Jean-Armand, but the thing Treville remembered him for most vividly were his stories. Ambrose had been a master-storyteller, weaving worlds of enchantment with his words and holding the young Jean-Armand spellbound with tales of magic and mystery. Deadly dragons and valiant knights had featured prominently in these tales, and although Treville had later connected the names from these childhood stories with characters from the famous Arthurian legends, he had traced little resemblance between those legends and the stories his tutor told.

To accompany his stories Ambrose had also produced sketches, and it had never once occurred to the child Jean-Armand to wonder where he found his inspiration. Enough that these illustrations lent faces to the names in the stories – Arthur and Guinevere and King Uther, the court physician Gaius and the witch Morgana, the great dragon Kilgharrah, and all the assorted knights of the Round Table.

Ambrose had never labelled his sketches, but as Treville leafed through them his memory supplied the names as readily as if the better part of four decades had not passed since he last listened with baited breath to those thrilling tales of derring-do. Sir Leon, Sir Percival, Sir Gwaine, Sir Elyan…and there it was. The sketch he'd come all the way back here in search of.

Sir Lancelot.

Treville stared at the sketch and was certain now that he must be insane – either that or the world itself had gone mad – because it was Aramis. No wonder the man's face had seemed so familiar.

The two were not exactly alike. Aramis wore his hair longer and his beard fuller than the man in the drawing, his face was thinner, harder, and his cheekbones sharper, but these differences were merely superficial. It was definitely him, there could be no question. Even the scars matched. Yet this sketch had been made years before his birth.

How could Monsieur Ambrose have so accurately sketched the face of a man who hadn't yet been born?

Unable to fathom any logical solution to the mystery, Treville packed the sketches away in his saddlebags and returned to Paris, where Aramis was laughing and joking with the Musketeer named Marsac, blissfully ignorant that any such mystery should exist.

Treville saw no reason to tell him – what, after all, could he say? Privately, however, he continued to watch and wonder and wait, although for what he could not say.

On a bitterly cold spring day, on the orders of the king, Captain Treville sent twenty-two Musketeers to their deaths in a godforsaken forest on the border with Savoy, sacrificial goats offered up as distraction for a so-called greater good. Anticipating no danger on a mission they knew only as a training exercise, their position shamefully betrayed, they were slaughtered in their sleep, and, although he'd done only what he must, as a soldier, Jean-Armand knew he would never forgive himself.

Of the twenty-two, only one returned alive – wounded and half-frozen and haunted, but alive.

Aramis. Of course. Who else would it have been?

Watching over him as he fought his way back to life and health, grieving for the comrades he'd lost, Treville thought again of Monsieur Ambrose's sketch of Sir Lancelot, locked away in the strongbox in his office, and wondered anew what kind of destiny fate had in mind for this man.


	3. Chapter 3

3

Savoy hit hard.

For Aramis, becoming a Musketeer had felt something like coming home, the regiment founded on much the same principles of honour and duty and justice that Lancelot had once found in the Knights of Camelot. Here, he felt, was the new life he'd been striving for. Old friends would never be forgotten, but new friends could be made. He had a place to belong once more, something to believe in. He had a future.

And then he awoke in the snow for a second time, but this time he was not alone. This time he had twenty blood-stained corpses for company, his new friends as utterly lost as the old ones had been. Whether a thousand years or a single day, death divided and there was no coming back.

Except, it seemed, for him.

Rebuilding was harder the second time around. Aramis mourned his lost comrades, both the new and the old, and Lancelot was weary, wondered again and again why death had not held him.

Why had he been brought back? Who could have done it? What did they want from him?

He became painfully aware of the close scrutiny of Captain Treville, always there, always watching. Was it pity? Was it sympathy? Or was it contempt?

He'd once rejoiced in the sense of brotherhood and belonging he'd found in the Musketeers. He felt now like the alien he really was, felt he'd been fooling himself all along. A man of the 6th century could never belong in the 17th. Why even try? Why give his heart to any cause if only to have it torn out again and again. The Knights of Camelot were gone. Now his Musketeer brothers were gone. How many times would he have to start over again? How many times could a man lose everything before he gave up on caring about anything?

If the loss of good friends came close to defeating him, it was the discovery of new friends that saved him, two in particular, new recruits fortunate enough to have been spared that fateful mission. Aramis had known both only slightly before Savoy, but after, when there were so few Musketeers remaining, the regiment left in disarray, they were thrown together rather more.

The friendship formed almost against his will. He had no desire to become close to anyone, not again. What was the point? His friendship seemed almost to be a curse, at this point, those he cared about doomed always to death, while he himself was doomed to life.

Yet there they were, his brother Musketeers, standing at his side as he slowly emerged from the fog of injury, grief and despair. Porthos the big-hearted, the gentle giant, loyal and true, a larger-than-life figure full of passion and laughter, raised up from the slums of Paris to the ranks of the King's own Musketeers – a feat that Lancelot, whose own lowly birth had once been an obstacle to advancement, could not help but admire. And Athos the noble, the master swordsman, a man of great principle and integrity and innate authority, who wore his melancholy like a cloak and whose reluctance to speak of a painful past Aramis could understand only too well.

The more self-destructive tendencies Athos tended toward were another thing Aramis could understand only too well, although his own took rather a different form.

These two men embodied every principle that Lancelot had ever believed in and reminded Aramis daily that life and comradeship were a gift, not a curse. Death, he knew, was a possibility accepted and faced by every soldier every day, so what truly mattered was simply living the life they were given for as long it could be held.

Together, the three of them added up to rather more than the sum of their parts. The Inseparables, the rest of the slowly-rebuilding regiment began to call them.

It was enough, Aramis told himself. Whatever the mysteries and horrors of the past, whatever the future might hold, here and now, this was more than enough.

Years passed. The memory of Camelot faded enough that it no longer stung, at least not so much, and was securely locked away at the back of his mind, where it could do no harm. The past was gone. No man could tell what the future might bring. Aramis chose to devote his entire being to the _now_ , and live each and every moment to the full, thanking God – _not_ his mysterious benefactor – for this new life he'd been given, however it had come about.

He fought and wept and laughed and raged at the side of his Musketeer brothers, wherever their duty led them. He went gambling with Porthos and drinking with Athos, brawled with the Red Guard, enjoyed the company of a string of beautiful women – _but none, not one, that came close to the memory of Gwen, dear, kind Gwen, also a thousand years gone_ – and provoked the wrath of their husbands.

It was not, perhaps, what Lancelot would have done, in those long ago days when he was young and idealistic, full of hopes and dreams. But Lancelot had died and Aramis had been reborn in his place, older and sadder and, if not wiser, then certainly more jaded. He had always admired female beauty, and Lancelot's principle and restraint had won him nothing, after all, so in this unexpected new life Aramis saw no reason not to indulge. Who, after all, did it hurt if he sought solace in the arms of a beautiful and willing woman? He was generous with his affections, be it the lowliest serving girl or the wealthiest merchant's wife – even, on one memorable occasion, a noble Comtesse. He sought pleasure, sought distraction, was prepared to love each one of them wholeheartedly for as long as the encounter might last without ever quite acknowledging to himself his unwillingness to fall _in_ love, and if in his quieter moments he was honest enough to recognise that he was both searching for something to replace what he had lost and also distancing himself from who he had once been, then he was quick to bury the thought deep. Preferably in the next available woman, and if she came with an angry husband or father or mistress attached, well, then so be it.

He courted death each day, daring it rather than wishing for it, and wondered what it meant that it so steadfastly refused to reclaim him.

One rainy day a man-shaped storm of rage and grief came charging into the garrison breathing fire and fury, prepared to take on all comers, and within a matter of days the closed fellowship that was the Inseparables had somehow acquired a new member. Not a full Musketeer, not yet – commissions were harder to come by, now that the regiment was well established – but it was only a matter of time. D'Artagnan was strong and skilled, cunning and courageous, to say nothing of idealistic, in much the same way that Lancelot had been, once upon a time. Young and impetuous, he came into their brotherhood as a genuine breath of fresh air.

 _Arthur_ , Lancelot thought, in that quiet place at the back of his mind that was still Camelot, _would have loved him_.

He might have known he would fall again someday, it was his nature to love, after all, but he was not the slightest bit prepared for it when it came. There was a riot at the Chatelet, slap bang in the middle of Queen Anne's charitable Good Friday visit. Duty called, and Aramis fought in the thick of it, threw himself atop the queen in a hail of musket balls to shield her from the gunfire, without thinking twice.

It was only later, as he helped her to her feet and offered meaningless reassurances, that he realised the danger – a very different kind of danger than that he'd tried to shield her from. At a distance, she was the Queen, pomp and majesty. But up close like this, soft smiles and fluttering fingers, fussing over scrapes he'd not even noticed, she was a _woman_ , a woman of compassion and kindness of the sort that had always been best calculated to strike at his heart.

Aramis felt himself teetering at the edge of a dangerous precipice, and then Queen Anne held his eyes and smiled again, hesitant and shy and somehow yearning, and he knew he was lost.

Lancelot remembered Gwen and wondered if he was doomed to always love best the women he could never have.

On a scorching summer's day, the Duke of Savoy arrived in Paris to sign a treaty, stirring bitter memories that Aramis had spent five years trying to bury, and hot on his heels came Marsac, the deserter Aramis had once called brother, breathing poisonous warnings of treachery and betrayal that rang a horrible note of truth.

Savoy. What had truly happened at Savoy, all those years ago?

Aramis remembered the bodies of his comrades, lying broken and bleeding in the snow, and felt a terrible, treacherous gulf open up beneath his feet. Something was badly wrong.

Captain Treville was one of the finest men he knew, the sure foundation on which the Musketeers had been built. And yet.

And yet.

Pursuit of the truth was not desire but visceral need, attainment of the truth felt like falling, and it ended with a choice. Marsac's life for Treville's.

"We're soldiers, Captain," he said, over the mound of freshly turned earth that had claimed the 21st victim of Savoy. "We follow our orders no matter where they lead, even to death."

This same requirement of duty – that, and a solemn vow made to a lady – had taken Lancelot to his own grave, once upon a time, his life for Arthur's, and for Merlin's, and for Camelot.

How had that sacrifice brought him here?

A thousand years.

Aramis had been a King's Musketeer now for far longer than Lancelot had ever been a Knight of Camelot, but there were still days when the sheer enormity of those thousand years took his breath away.

He would never understand it, he knew that now. So he did the only thing he could do. He continued to live.

There came a day when the Musketeers were sent on a mission that was routine enough, the delivery of certain documents to a particular place. On their return journey to Paris they were ambushed by masked bandits who were, no doubt, in the pay of the Spanish and would be disappointed indeed to know they were too late, the prize already long gone. So, they were forced to fight for their lives, as they had so many times before and unquestionably would many times again – always supposing, of course, they survived this battle.

It happened in the throes of the battle.

Aramis had discharged both pistols and was fighting sword-to-sword. As he finished off his opponent he saw Porthos taking on two at once, rushed to block the attack of a third, creeping up on his friend's blind side, and realised too late that he'd left himself open.

He spun, saw a masked man with pistol raised, and knew he was about to die, _again, at last_.

Then, somewhere beyond the masked man, a flicker of movement among the trees, the merest glimpse of a pale face and blue eyes that flashed gold in a manner he'd known, once, a thousand years ago, utterly impossible here.

A large branch fell on the bandit's head, out of nowhere, and dropped him where he stood. His pistol, for good measure, crumbled into dust in his hand as he fell.

Beyond the crumpled form of the bandit, that flicker of movement became a hooded figure hurrying away as if afraid it had been seen.

Impossibility crystallised into an unimaginable hope that crashed through his veins like fire and ice.

Aramis found both his legs and his voice, and started to run, bellowing, "Merlin!"


	4. Chapter 4

4

The Musketeer called Athos, formerly known as the Comte de la Fère, would not have believed it if he had not seen it with his own eyes.

Even after seeing it with his own eyes, he still was not sure he believed it.

The branch that came crashing down upon the head of a bandit even as Athos lunged, too late, to save his friend's life…well, that much perhaps could be dismissed as sheer chance. Branches broke. It happened. The fortuitous nature of such happenstance here might be unlikely, but it was not impossible.

The pistol, however, could not be explained, not by any natural means.

And the reaction of Aramis, that was also hard to fathom.

The man went deathly white, and it was not the narrowness of his escape that perturbed him, that much was clear, even if Athos didn't already know that he'd faced far worse with no more than a laugh and a quip. He looked, rather, as if he'd seen a ghost.

He seemed also to have completely forgotten the pitched battle going on all around him. Athos swiftly parried a sword thrust meant for his friend and despatched the bandit forthwith.

As he turned back to Aramis, he saw a hooded figure scurrying away among the trees – and second later Aramis was gone, giving chase, shouting wildly as he ran.

"Merlin! Merlin!"

The last of the bandits fell to d'Artagnan's sword. Sheathing his own, Athos ran after Aramis, confused and alarmed, the impossible thing he'd seen replaying itself over and over behind his eyes, and the crash of footsteps at his heel told him that Porthos and d'Artagnan were not far behind.

He caught up with Aramis just as Aramis caught up with the hooded man, who'd stopped running at the crest of the ridge and turned back, allowing his hood to fall, revealing a shock of wild black hair and bright blue eyes that seemed almost to be popping right out of his head.

If Aramis looked as if he'd seen a ghost, he had nothing on this other man, who gasped and stared and finally whispered, "Lancelot."

Aramis stretched out a shaking hand to the other man's arm, as if to reassure himself that he was real, flesh and blood. "How is this possible? You were gone."

"You were _dead_ ," the other man retorted, still staring at him in abject disbelief, and Athos felt a chill run down his spine at these words and the sincerity with which they were spoken.

"How can you be here?" Aramis and the other man demanded in unison, eyes locked, as if they thought they might unravel the mysteries of the universe if they only stared at each other closely enough.

Seriously worried now, Athos decided that enough was enough. "I have a better question," he stiffly announced, and saw his friend start, as if he'd not even realised anyone else was present – and that was a sure sign that something was badly wrong.

"So do I," growled Porthos, standing at his shoulder to glare at the stranger in deep, dark suspicion. "What the bleedin' heck is going on here?"

Aramis turned, wild-eyed, and looked from one to the other of them with the most helpless expression Athos had ever seen him wear. Like a startled rabbit in the sights of a hunter's gun. He scrubbed a hand through his hair and shook his head.

"I don't know," he offered at last. "I can't…" He waved his hands helplessly and then said, "This is Merlin. He's…an old friend."

The introduction was made in tones of deepest disbelief, and still they both looked as if they'd each seen a ghost, each clinging to the other's arm as if afraid they might simply vanish without that contact.

The other man offered a hopeful little half-smile and half-wave, as if he thought this might encourage everyone to go away and leave them to their reunion – and this, more than anything, seemed to bring Aramis back to himself, a flash of fond amusement melting through the look of shock on his face.

"You really are here. You haven't changed," he said in tones of wonder.

The man called Merlin looked him up and down. "You have – but it really is you, isn't it? I mean really, properly you."

"I really am me," Aramis quietly confirmed, as Merlin reached out to brush his fingers across the _fleur-de-lis_ inscribed pauldron at his shoulder.

"What's this?"

"A uniform," Aramis said.

"So…you're a Musketeer in 17th century France, now?" Merlin shook his head incredulously. "That makes a certain amount of sense, I suppose – except, of course, for all the ways in which it absolutely _doesn't_."

"I don't think any of this makes much sense," was d'Artagnan's offering. "Who is this, Aramis?"

Merlin frowned, cocking his head to the side. "Aramis?" he asked in confusion, penetrating blue eyes fixed on the man. "Did you change your name?"

"Could we get back to my question, please?" Athos placed all the authority he could muster in his voice, because none of this was helping to abate his concern in the slightest. He waited until he had everyone's full attention and then, a fear he could not quite identify lending extra sharpness to his tone, said, "I saw a pistol turn to dust in a man's hand. Would someone care to explain how such a thing could be possible?"

Both Aramis and Merlin looked alarmed. "You saw that?"

"I saw it."

While they exchanged anxious glances, it was the turn of Porthos and d'Artagnan to wear expressions of disbelief.

"Pistols don't just fall into dust," Porthos flatly stated.

"Not in my experience, no," Athos agreed. "Yet I saw it."

"You must be mistaken," d'Artagnan suggested.

"There was no mistake." Athos watched both Merlin and Aramis closely as he spoke. To Aramis he added, "You saw it too." It was not a question. "And you also know what caused it."

This, too, was not a question. He could see the truth of it in his friend's eyes.

His expression wary now, uneasy in a way that Athos had never before seen directed at himself, Aramis shifted slightly, just enough that he was now shielding Merlin with his body, standing between this old friend and his Musketeer brothers.

Marsac came to mind, an unhappy recollection. Aramis was nothing if not loyal to those he called friend, occasionally to a fault.

"Athos, please," he said, his tone urgent and afraid. "Forget what you saw. It was nothing. A trick of the light."

Athos shook his head, more certain now than ever. "What I saw was not natural. It was…"

He couldn't finish the sentence. It defied all belief.

It was Merlin who supplied the word Athos hadn't been able to bring himself to think, never mind speak, sighing heavily as he pushed out from behind Aramis to stand at his side. "It was magic. My magic. Sorry. I don't usually allow anyone to see it – or to catch up with me, if they do. I got distracted."

Magic. There was no such thing as magic. And yet Athos had seen what he'd seen, and there could be no other explanation.

"I'm sorry," Aramis murmured, but Merlin shook his head, looking rather as if he might burst into tears at any moment, and reached out to grip his arm, fervent and sincere.

"Don't be sorry. I am too happy to see you to care that your friends have seen me. Perhaps I'll care tomorrow, but…" He let out a choking sound that was half-laugh and half-sob. "I thought I was alone, the last piece of Camelot still standing. I have been so alone."

And all at once they were in each other's arms, clinging on with almost fevered intensity.

Athos shuffled awkwardly, touched by this raw display of emotion in spite of himself, and cast his eyes toward Porthos, who looked angry and confused, and d'Artagnan, who just looked confused.

"You can't tell anyone what you saw," Aramis suddenly said, pulling away from his old friend to turn beseeching eyes upon them, his voice fierce. "Please, Athos – all of you. If you have ever cared for me at all, do this for me now."

"Are we going to talk about the fact that he said you were dead?" Porthos demanded, glaring balefully at Merlin. "That's what you said to him," he reminded the man, and to Aramis, almost accusingly, "He said you were dead. What was that all about?"

That was right, Athos remembered, seeing again the look of shock on the man's face upon recognising Aramis. He had said that and he'd meant it. He'd believed it.

Aramis certainly didn't look dead. He was very much alive. He did, however, in this moment, look both haunted and hunted. "You heard that?"

"We all heard it."

Aramis hesitated, eyes darting back and forth among them, trying to decide what to do, what to say, how to persuade; Athos knew him too well to be fooled by anything he said next, could read him like a book.

"It's a mistake," he offered at last, his tone just a shade too hopeful to be convincing. "A misunderstanding, my friend was mistaken."

It was plausible enough. These things did happen, after all, reports of a man's death could easily be exaggerated, and yet…no. No, Athos felt deep in his gut that this was more than that, worse than that. The conversation he'd heard in that first moment of reunion, when neither was aware of the audience – it had spoken of something much deeper and much darker. So did the looks on both of their faces right now, belying all possibility of a simple explanation.

And there was still the matter of the dissolving pistol.

"Your friend sounded very certain," he pointed out. That friend had gone quiet now and looked extremely worried. And Aramis looked as though his whole world was falling apart, all colour draining from his cheeks and panic in his eyes. It was not the reaction of a man at the centre of a simple misunderstanding, but rather that of a man who feared this secret might destroy his entire life.

"Please, Athos, it's not too late," he pleaded. "What happened in the past, the past I shared with Merlin, you don't need to know. We can end this now, go back to Paris. Forget anything ever happened here. You don't need to know."

He sounded almost desperate – and that, in itself, was reason enough for Athos to be unable to drop this. Again he remembered Marsac, and understood now why Aramis had not felt able to rest until he knew the truth.

Something was badly wrong. Athos caught the eye of Porthos, bristling with concern, and d'Artagnan, full of alarm, and knew that they each felt the same way.

"I'm sorry, my friend. I believe I do need to know the meaning of this, we all do. Why did your friend believe you dead?"

Aramis let out a long breath, clasped his hands behind his head, and began to pace about the clearing in agitation. This was, very clearly, a thing he did not wish to discuss.

"I didn't just believe it, I knew it to be fact," Merlin quietly spoke up, apparently having decided to give up on any hope of secrecy. "That's why I need to know what happened, how you came to be here, Lancelot, because…you really did die. I watched you die. Twice, in fact."

Aramis had turned his back and kept it turned, his posture defeated and his voice low as he made a fateful admission. "I know. I remember."

Athos felt a chill of apprehension that trickled along his spine like ice. What could all this mean?

"Once is generally sufficient for most people," he drawled, watching his friend's agitation with deep concern.

He felt as if he were standing at the brink of something truly extraordinary, a cataclysm that might alter his perception of the entire world. Perhaps it already had. He remembered the pistol, dissolving into dust in the hand of the bandit. If such a thing were possible, if such _magic_ were possible – then what else might be possible?

Perhaps even the resurrection of the dead? Was that what this Merlin believed had happened?

"How can you be here?" Merlin pressed again, staring intently at Aramis, who shook his head defiantly.

"I don't know. How can you be here?"

"I'm an immortal warlock," Merlin retorted, somewhat outrageously. "But you were dead. Very dead. I laid you to rest myself. And now you're back, large as life and twice as bearded. You must remember something."

"I don't," Aramis insisted.

"Who could have done it?"

"I don't know."

"And why? Why bring you back – why here, why now?"

" _Merlin!_ " Aramis breathed the name out in a manner that was almost supplication. "I have asked myself all of these questions, and more, believe me, for years. I have found no answer. I do not know."

That he was no longer making any attempt at denial somehow made it all the worse.

Merlin shook his head sadly. "Tell me," he said. "What happened to you?"

Aramis had no reply, only shook his head again, a mulish set to his mouth. He looked tired and defeated, and Athos found all at once that he could no longer stand and watch as his friend unravelled before his eyes. He strode across the clearing, took Aramis by the arm, and guided him, unresisting, to a fallen log nearby.

"Sit," he ordered, infusing his voice with a note of command that was rarely disobeyed by anyone.

Aramis sat and put his head in his hands. Athos sat beside him and rested a hand at the back of his neck, hoping his friend would draw comfort from the gesture. He no longer knew what to think. It seemed impossible, beyond absurdity, but if there was any truth to it at all – and however much he might wish to deny it, that truth was written in the eyes of both his friend and the stranger – then he distinctly felt that a man's resurrection was a deeply personal subject for such an interrogation as this.

"I'm sorry, brother. This is difficult for you. You tried to warn us. Every man has a past, and every man is entitled to his secrets. No one knows that better than I. But…" he measured his words carefully. "Here and now, I believe we are quite some way past this particular secret, don't you agree?"

Aramis studied his boots, mouth twisting sourly. "If I tell you my past, you will not believe it, old friend."

"Say it anyway," Athos urged.

Aramis glanced sideways at him, eyes dark and unfathomable, and offered a faint smile of such deep sorrow it was almost unbearable to behold.

"I died," he said, very softly. "I remember dying. And then I woke up here." He looked at Merlin. "That really is all I know."

"No," Merlin insisted, kneeling before him to look into his eyes, fierce. "No, there must be something more. Don't you remember anything more?"

"I don't."

"This is madness," d'Artagnan spoke up. "It's impossible. People don't just rise from the dead."

"Not without help," Merlin agreed, eyes fixed on Aramis still. "That's why I need to know more – where it happened, who you saw. Anything you can remember, anything at all."

"There is no more," Aramis insisted. He glanced sideways at Athos again, then upward to take in Porthos and d'Artagnan. This was, without question, not a subject he'd ever have intended for their ears, and yet it was far too late to turn back now. He met Merlin's eyes once more and sighed, a soft, sad sigh of capitulation. "I woke up in the snow. I couldn't begin to tell you where. The place was not known to me and I'm certain I could never find it again. There was no one in sight, not anywhere. I looked…but not very hard, I admit. I was barefoot in deep snow with no coat. Finding shelter swiftly became a rather more pressing concern. That really is all there is to tell. Do you believe me?"

The quiet question was directed at Athos and Porthos and d'Artagnan, one and all. They exchanged stunned glances, and Athos knew his friends were struggling to know what to think. He himself certainly was.

And yet he knew, deep in his soul, that what he was hearing was the truth, incredible and impossible though it was.

"Yes," he gently replied. "What you are saying is madness beyond all reason, but I know you are telling the truth."

He was also sure that what they had heard was not even the half of it.

Porthos, though, let out an angry rumbling sound from deep within his chest. "No," he insisted. "Dead men don't walk. How could a man be raised from the dead?"

"With _magic_ ," Merlin replied, turning to him. He stretched out a hand, whispering unfamiliar words beneath his breath, and his blue eyes flashed gold for the briefest of instants, so that Porthos jumped back in alarm.

Aramis began to offer a protest that died on his lips as Merlin's hand, impossibly, lit up with flame. He subsided with a whispered, "Are you sure?" and the other man nodded.

"It's all right. They're your friends. They need to understand." He held his hand up for them all to see, twisting it this way and that so that the flames played across the fingers, glowing and golden. Then he folded his hand and the flame was gone, without trace.

And he opened his hand again to show that it was unburnt, not a single mark.

Magic, indeed.

Porthos stared, his mouth falling open, and Athos knew that he now believed – and d'Artagnan also. Neither had seen the pistol, so perhaps this demonstration really had been required, for their sake.

Aramis, though, snorted and shook his head, smiling now, and at last he was beginning to look like his old self again, softly teasing, "Still with the parlour tricks, Merlin."

"I have to amuse myself somehow, don't I?" Merlin quipped, but became serious again almost at once, regarding Aramis with deep concern. "But the kind of magic it would take to restore a man to life, and after so long, that's…well, it's troubling. It's very troubling. The end result fills me with delight, but the cause?"

"I know," Aramis grimly agreed. "It troubles me, too."

"Can I ask a question?" D'Artagnan spoke up, frowning. "I'm sorry, this is indelicate, but…when exactly is all this supposed to have happened? _When_ did you die?"

Aramis glanced up at him, a wry twist to his mouth. "A long time ago."

"Almost eleven hundred years, to be precise," Merlin added, and the silence that followed went on for a very long time. Aramis shot an impatient look at him, but Merlin only shrugged. "They're going to find out sooner or later, Lancelot, we might as well get it over with."

"Lancelot," said d'Artagnan, very faintly. "You keep calling him that."

"It's his _name_ ," Merlin replied, slowly and distinctly, as if speaking to an imbecile. D'Artagnan looked at Aramis, who nodded.

"Lancelot died," he said. "A long time ago. I'm Aramis now."

"To be fair," Athos pointed out, "We always knew that _Aramis_ was a pseudonym – just as _Athos_ is." Anonymity, he'd always believed, was another thing that every man was entitled to, should he wish for it.

Porthos was shaking his head, his voice flat and angry, thick with denial. "Eleven hundred years?"

Athos had been trying not to think about that, the sheer enormity of it. Eleven hundred years took them back to…what, the sixth century? That was absurd…and yet if he'd believed the rest of the story…

Merlin looked tired now, an edge of bitterness creeping into his voice. "I'm an immortal warlock. I've been counting."

Immortal warlock. He'd called himself that once before. This time, Athos thought he might just believe it.

And Aramis – Aramis looked devastated, all over again. "You were alone for all that time? I thought…bad enough to wake and find everyone gone, but to be alone, and for such an expanse of time…"

Merlin smiled gently, reaching out to clasp his shoulder. "I am _very_ happy to see you, old friend. Tell me, what were those years like, for you? Were you aware of them at all?"

Aramis shook his head. "There was no space in between," he said. "I died…and then I died again – and then I awoke and learned that over a thousand years had gone by, in the space between one heartbeat and the next. I was in Camelot, and then I was in France, and everything I'd ever known was gone, in an instant. It seemed no more than an instant, to me."

It sounded, quite frankly, horrific, on both counts: both to live through the ages and to be wrenched from one life to another, without warning or consent.

"You really did die?" rumbled Porthos, eyes suspiciously bright. In one smooth movement, he abruptly hauled Aramis to his feet and enfolded him in his arms, fierce and protective. "Don't ever do that again."

Aramis huffed a soft little laugh and patted the big man's back. "I endeavour not to, my friend."

"No you don't," Porthos gruffly told him. "You really don't. You think we don't notice, but we do."

It was true. Athos thought of the contradiction that was Aramis, relishing every moment of his life and yet so recklessly careless of it. Perhaps, he thought, it was the only way a man could respond after having died and been restored to life for reasons he could not fathom.

"May I ask another question?" d'Artagnan asked, frowning again. "I'm sorry, doesn't anyone else see it? Lancelot. Merlin. Camelot. I've heard all these names before."

"So have I," Athos realised now, wondering why he'd not made the connection himself.

"Well I haven't," said Porthos, and Aramis also appeared to be mystified, although Merlin did not seem surprised.

"These are names from legend," Athos explained, but Aramis only blinked at him in frank incomprehension.

"What legend?"

"King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table," d'Artagnan supplied. "Everyone's heard of it."

"I haven't," Porthos said again, and his past was such that of course he'd never have encountered such mythology; the children of the slums were too busy surviving to have time to spare for fairy stories. That Aramis was equally ignorant perhaps lent further credence to his claim.

"It is a famous legend," said Athos, watching the incredulous face of Aramis closely. "And since I don't believe your story is a fabrication, the only explanation must be…that the legend is true, in some form at least."

It was a truly remarkable thought. A day of revelations indeed.

Aramis opened and closed his mouth a few times, but nothing came out; Athos didn't think he'd ever seen his loquacious friend so comprehensively silenced. At length he managed a feeble, "I don't understand."

"You know, I don't remember you being this slow," said Merlin. "It's been almost eleven hundred years, Lancelot. People talk. History becomes legend becomes myth. And Camelot lives on in those stories. Didn't you ever look? Did you never wonder what had become of everyone?"

"I knew what had become of them," said Aramis, pain entering his eyes. "It was over a thousand years. The world I knew was gone – lost to the ages. Why would I look? What could I hope to find? I already knew that everyone I had ever known was dead and gone, a thousand years dead and gone."

"But their names live on," Merlin said. "And so does yours, by the way. See, even your friends here had heard of you, without even knowing it."

Aramis hesitated, wrinkling his nose rather dubiously. "What do these stories say?"

Merlin laughed. "Probably just as well you never looked, I'm not sure you'd recognise what legend has made of us. History has a way of twisting as the centuries pass, the stories exaggerated and distorted with each re-telling. I know I've heard many tales that I know aren't true. But the essence of those days, that's what lives on." He hesitated for a moment before continuing, "Sir Lancelot, they say, was the noblest and bravest of all the Knights of Camelot."

And Aramis…actually flushed. As vain and boastful as the man could be, on his more manic days, Athos had never dreamt he would live to see such a thing. Perhaps, he thought, he was seeing here a glimpse of Lancelot, rather than the man his death and resurrection had made of him.

"I don't think that's true," Aramis quietly demurred, but Merlin was not to be swayed.

"No, I think it is," he insisted with absolute sincerity. "I haven't forgotten what you did."

"Why? What did he do?" Porthos asked with furrowed brow.

"Saved us all," Merlin softly stated, and just for a moment you could have heard a pin drop. Then Aramis shook his head.

"I did only what had to be done. It was my duty."

There was another story there, perhaps deeper and darker again even than all they'd heard so far. Athos remembered a day when Aramis had thrown himself upon a bomb in a crowded street, a desperate and ludicrously selfless attempt to save everyone around him, king and queen included. He would not, he suspected, ever want to hear the full story of how his friend had come to die – and die twice, moreover – so many centuries ago.

Merlin cleared his throat, suddenly awkward. "The funeral was lovely, by the way," he offered. "Arthur made a very pretty speech. I'm not sure if you'd have loved it or hated it." His young man's face became very old and grave. "Lancelot, have you really never seen anything or anyone that could explain how you were brought back? No one has ever approached you, or…I don't know, done anything, tried anything?"

Aramis shook his head tiredly. "Never – and I have kept careful watch, believe me. I remember Morgana only too well."

"You do?" Merlin regarded him through narrowed eyes. "I wasn't sure you would."

"I remember everything," said Aramis. " _This_ …is not like that."

"No, I can see that." Merlin looked him up and down again and nodded. "You are completely yourself, not bound at all. I can see it. I can feel it. I just don't understand how. There must be some explanation."

"I'm sure there is, but I've never found it. And…I thought it safest not to attempt any serious investigation."

"Why?" Porthos asked.

Aramis hesitated slightly before answering, a rueful twist to his mouth. "Let's just say that not all magical practitioners are as benevolent as my friend here."

"Raising the dead is dark magic, very dark, it's completely forbidden – and for good reason," Merlin explained, adding, "Sorry," in a quick aside to Aramis, who shrugged.

"Not at all, I completely agree."

Athos regarded them both closely. "You believe that whoever raised you may have had sinister purpose?"

"I think it's a distinct possibility," Aramis admitted. "But they've never shown themselves in any way, so I thought, perhaps, if they've lost track of me somehow, if by some chance they don't know where I am, perhaps it might be best to keep it that way."

"Is that why you changed your name?" Merlin asked.

Athos lifted an eyebrow. "If anonymity was your goal, I'm not sure a post in the king's elite guard was the most covert of positions you could have chosen."

Aramis smiled wryly. "I'm a soldier. I have always been a soldier. It's all I know, what else would I do? I was here, there was no going back. So I made a new life and I've been living it ever since. That is all."

He looked utterly spent, wrung out by the turbulent emotions of the day, and Athos realised now that he didn't feel much better himself. This had all been decidedly overwhelming. He stretched out a hand to clasp his friend's arm and drew him into a hug, felt Porthos and d'Artagnan join in the embrace, a tacit renewal of the bond of their brotherhood.

"Thank you for your understanding, my friends," Aramis murmured into the shelter of their arms.

They stepped apart, regarded one another sombrely.

"So what happens now?" d'Artagnan asked.

The answer to that question was, to Athos, very simple. "We do our duty, the same tomorrow as it was yesterday and today. Nothing has changed; we have merely acquired new knowledge. We return to Paris and assure the Cardinal that his letters have been safely delivered, then –"

"Oh God, the Cardinal," Porthos groaned. "He would have a field day with all this!"

"And that is why no one must ever know," Aramis swiftly warned. "Not about me, and especially not about Merlin, not ever."

"They won't hear it from us," Porthos gruffly promised. "Who'd ever believe us anyway? But…if magic is real, and there are people like him walking around using it, how come everyone doesn't know already?"

"Because it's forbidden," said Merlin. "It always has been, for centuries, ever since the Old Religion died. And because there aren't people like me…or not many, not any more. And I'm _careful_. I don't make a habit of revealing my magic in this way, you know. In almost eleven hundred years before today, I can just about count the number of people who have ever known on the fingers of one hand. Lancelot was one of the very few, and he kept my secret all his days, took it with him to the grave.

"I'd never have told anyone, not ever," Aramis said. "It was you who gave yourself away here, you know. You're growing careless in your old age, my friend."

At that, Merlin spluttered indignantly and then laughed out loud, a peal of pure delight. "I was distracted, you dunderhead! And it was you who distracted me, you, in all your _miraculously resurrected_ glory. What was I supposed to do? Besides…" His eyes flashed with mischief. "It doesn't matter anyway, because I can do more than just parlour tricks, you know. So if your friends become a problem, I can just magic us both far away from here. No one will ever find us."

Athos couldn't tell whether or not he was joking.

"That won't be necessary," he swiftly stated. "Your secret is safe, you have my word as a Musketeer."

"And you'll not receive a finer assurance than that," Aramis told Merlin. "If Lancelot was the noblest of all the Knights of Camelot, then Athos is the noblest of all the Musketeers."

Athos caught his eye and repeated his own words back at him, smiling. "I don't think that's true."

"No, I think it is," said Aramis, and Athos wondered at the sparkle that had come into his eyes and identified it as _relief_ , as if a tremendous weight had been lifted that no one had even known he was carrying.

The weight of a lost kingdom and a lost life, perhaps.

Satisfied that they understood one another, Athos turned to Merlin. "I feel you should return to Paris with us. You and Aramis clearly have a great deal to catch up on, and if there is some dark warlock out there with sinister intent, your expertise may be of great value."

"I was going to suggest the same thing myself," Aramis added. "Will you come?"

"You don't have to ask," said Merlin. "Do you seriously believe I'd let you out of my sight now? I will say, though: I'm not sure I like what the 17th century has done to your manners, Lancelot. Do you realise, we've been talking all this time and not once has it occurred to you to _introduce your friends_ to me…"


	5. Chapter 5

5

It had been, for Captain Treville, a fairly ordinary day. He'd held morning muster with the men to assign duties, attended the King at the Palace, and then settled in his office to the tedium of paperwork, of which his responsibilities brought him far too much.

The return of Athos and the others from a routine assignment was overdue, but not alarmingly so. Delays on the road were far from uncommon. Still, knowing as he did the sensitivity of the documents they'd been carrying, he knew he'd not feel easy until they returned and so was listening out for the sound of their horses.

At the first clatter of hooves he rose from his desk and strode out onto the balcony. Once assured that it was them and that all four looked to be in one piece, he prepared to return to the letter he'd been drafting and await their report.

Then he realised that they appeared to have acquired a passenger along the road, this fifth man riding behind Aramis, and as the man prepared to dismount, Treville caught sight of his face and was instantly transported back in time forty years to his childhood on the family estate.

It was Monsieur Ambrose.

But it was Monsieur Ambrose as he had been, not as he should be, after the passage of more than forty years. His old tutor had apparently not aged a day in all that time.

For a moment, Treville wondered if he was having a stroke, or if perhaps he really had gone insane. All the air seemed to have been sucked out of the garrison, his vision greying and narrowing until all he could see was the face of his old tutor, standing down there in the yard not a day older than he'd been forty years ago, talking to the man whose face he'd sketched many years before he could possibly have been born.

It was not possible.

He gradually became aware that Athos had mounted the stairs and was talking, something about an ambush on the road. Five minutes ago he'd have been concerned, would have wanted every detail. Now, he barely registered the words.

"That man," he gritted out through clenched teeth.

Athos followed his eyes. "An old friend of Aramis. We met him on the road and he returned to Paris with us. Are you feeling quite all right, Captain?"

Somewhere very deep inside, Treville realised, he'd been waiting for a moment like this ever since the day he recognised the face of Aramis in a forty-year-old sketch made by his old tutor.

He was not insane. An explanation existed, of that he was certain, and he might not like it but he intended nonetheless to learn it.

"My office," he snapped. "All of you, now – and bring your friend."

As he turned and stalked back to his desk, he caught a flash of unease in Athos's eyes, and it did nothing to improve his mood.

They filed in looking tired and apprehensive, Ambrose glancing curiously around at the contents of the office.

He was exactly the same as he had been, exactly the same as Treville remembered him: a young man somewhere in the twenties, perhaps, skinny, with prominent ears and wild black hair, his eyes the brightest of blues and his costume very simple. Exactly as if the past forty years had never happened.

An impossible man who'd created an impossible sketch.

Treville believed in the direct approach.

"Monsieur Ambrose," he greeted the man, swift and assured, before anyone else had the chance to speak. "What an unexpected pleasure to see you again. Do you remember me?"

He succeeded in wrong-footing them all, and might have found the array of surprised reactions comical in different circumstances.

Ambrose, if that was truly his name, startled and became wary. "Sorry, have we met?

"We have, on a small estate in Gascony – forty years ago." Treville waited for these words to sink in before he continued. "Or perhaps _Ambrose_ is not your real name, but it was the name you gave then, when you took on the role of tutor to the son of the house. You are looking extremely well, for a man of your advancing years."

At this, all five men began to cast furtive glances at one another in silent communication of their unease; whatever this was, they were all somehow in on it. Treville watched as Ambrose studied his face closely, and heard a sharp intake of breath as the connection was made.

"Oh, I don't believe it. You're Jean-Armand." He shook his head in disbelief and feebly added, "You got tall."

It was not very flattering to be recognised with such evident dismay, although understandable, perhaps, in the circumstances. There could be no natural explanation for this, and it was an unforgiving world.

That was the problem. The child Jean-Armand had adored Monsieur Ambrose, but as Captain of the Musketeers Treville saw him now as a threat, because if a man failed to age a day in forty years the only possible explanation was supernatural, and one of his Musketeers was directly related to this mystery, a man he knew to be loyal and brave, but if any hint of this got out there would be no protecting him.

"I'm not surprised you don't recognise me, I'm sure I have changed a great deal in forty years – which is why it surprises me to see that you haven't, not in the slightest. Many men would dearly love to know how you uncovered the secret of eternal youth. Tell me, what is your connection to Aramis?"

He read defensiveness in the posture of his men, protectiveness even. It was not reassuring. Whatever the explanation, they all knew it, and they feared his reaction to it.

"We're old friends, Captain," Aramis carefully replied. "Although we had not met for many years before today."

"How old? How many years?" Concern lent extra urgency to his voice, made it stern and harsh.

How could Ambrose have so accurately sketched the face of a man years before he was even born? Treville had puzzled over that mystery for years, had dreamt up many possible explanations, each one more outlandish than the last, without reaching any satisfactory conclusion…but now that Ambrose himself was before him once more, unchanged after forty years, a whole swathe of new possibilities were beginning to suggest themselves, none of them good.

This was an unforgiving world. He could not hope to protect his men from a danger he did not understand.

"Captain…" Athos began, but he seemed not to know what to say next, and was quelled with a single glance. Athos, Porthos and d'Artagnan might be in on this, whatever it was, but it was Ambrose and Aramis from whom an explanation of the mystery that connected them was required.

"How is it," Treville demanded, "That the years pass you by untouched? How is that possible?"

He waited, studying the faces of all five men before him. What was the terrible secret they were so keen to protect?

At length, Athos quietly said, "Captain Treville is one of the finest men I know. You can trust him."

Ambrose sighed. "Too many people know already."

"Know _what_ , exactly?" Treville sharply enquired. "That you don't age? Since I already know that much, you may as well explain it. I remember your stories well, Monsieur Ambrose, and can assure you that whatever explanation you offer could not possibly be worse than those my imagination is capable of producing."

They were all silent for a moment. Then Porthos said, "I don't think you have much of a choice here."

"The Captain is a good man, he won't betray you," d'Artagnan added, and at those words Treville found his eyes drawn back to Aramis and thought of Savoy, the memory twisting sourly in his gut.

He owed something to the sole survivor of Savoy, perhaps, but the resolution of this mystery could not be given up as payment of that debt.

Aramis had hung his head and was rubbing at the back of his neck, a nervous gesture, while Ambrose looked as though he couldn't quite believe the trap he'd walked into here.

"Eleven hundred years," he muttered at last in tones of deep resignation. "Eleven hundred years and I could count the number of people who knew on the fingers of one hand – but by all means, let's double that number in a single day. I knew I'd stayed in France too long." He looked Treville square in the face, and his eyes were very old in that young man's face. "I remember you well, Jean-Armand, you were more attentive than many I've taught over the years. Perhaps too attentive for my own good. There is a reason I generally don't stay for long in any one place and never go back once I've left – and that reason is to avoid exactly this. My name is Merlin, and too many people already know that I have magic. I'm a warlock. I don't grow old because I'm cursed to immortality."

It should, Treville told himself, be harder to believe this outrageous claim…but the proof was standing right before him. Merlin, the legendary wizard – who had featured only tangentially in his own stories, told to a little boy all those decades ago, and the only face from those stories that had never been sketched.

A warlock. Witchcraft and sorcery. Richelieu would have the man burned at the stake before the day was out, if only he knew.

And then there was the other side of the conundrum.

"And you, Aramis? You are not also an immortal warlock, by any chance?"

Aramis spluttered his surprise at the question, wide-eyed and shocked. "Captain?"

No. A different explanation for this one, then.

Treville crossed the office in two swift strides to open his strongbox, from which he withdrew a sheet of paper, yellow with age. He held it out for them all to see and allowed them to pass it among themselves.

"This sketch was made more than forty years ago. I have puzzled over it many times since the day we first met. So is there anything you'd like to tell me, Aramis? Or should I say Sir Lancelot?"

The silence was deafening. He'd never seen his men so thunderstruck.

It was Athos who eventually broke the silence, a rueful twist to his mouth. "It is not a bad likeness," he declared, passing the sketch on.

"You look very young here," d'Artagnan told Aramis, while Porthos looked toward Merlin.

"Is that what he looked like when you knew him? No wonder you thought he'd changed."

Finally Aramis twitched the sketch out of d'Artagnan's hand, regarded it impassively for a moment, and then turned to Merlin, who wore a chagrined expression as he said, "I forgot I'd left those with Jean-Armand. I never dreamt something like this might happen."

"I didn't know you could draw," Aramis said.

"It's been over a thousand years, Lancelot, you'd be amazed what you can learn to do in a thousand years," said Merlin, and there it was. Lancelot. The admission Treville had been waiting for.

"Have you learned to wield a sword?" Aramis retorted, quick as a flash. Merlin scoffed indignantly.

"I already know how to wield a sword! You've seen me."

"Yes, I have. Have you learned to wield a sword _properly_?" Aramis amended, and by way of reply was offered a self-deprecating grin that made the warlock look ludicrously young for the age he must surely be.

"No!" he admitted with a chuckle, and they laughed softly at one another as at a private joke.

Then Aramis turned back to Treville at last, looking very tired all of a sudden. "I have told this story once already today. Perhaps it will be easier, a second time. I place myself in your hands, Captain, if you are certain you wish to know the truth."

The explanation was made.

After a certain point, Treville stopped them for a moment while he brought out the strongest spirits he possessed.

"Was there really a dragon?" he had to ask, and there was a pause, Merlin shrugged and nodded, and then Porthos, Athos and d'Artagnan turned as one man to look at Aramis, who squirmed.

"I met it once," he said.

A little while later again, Treville went back to the strongbox and withdrew the rest of the sketches, sat and watched as Aramis gazed down at the faces of King Arthur and the Knights of Camelot, men he'd once known as friends.

Was this explanation better or worse than those he'd imagined? It didn't matter, the way forward now was clear.

"So then," Treville declared, at the end of it all. "We must make certain that the Cardinal never finds out."

And then it was later, and the others had gone while Athos remained to help Treville finish the last of the bottle while attempting to deliver a mission report that neither one of them had the heart for – attempted to discuss the delivery of the Cardinal's letters and subsequent ambush as if the whole world hadn't been turned on its head by the revelations of the day.

The difficulty was that any mention of the Cardinal seemed to turn both of their minds back to Aramis and to Merlin and the impossible story they'd told, and what it meant.

Treville sighed for the umpteenth time. "The Cardinal would burn them both if he knew."

"We had better not tell him, then." Athos picked up the sketch of Sir Lancelot and studied it again, shaking his head in disbelief at that likeness of Aramis as none of them had ever known him: young and earnest, the head and shoulders portrait affording the merest glimpse of an unfamiliar uniform, chain mail, straight out of another age.

"I thought I was going mad when I first saw him," Treville recalled, wondering anew at the coincidence that had brought them all together like this. "We had never met, yet his face was familiar to me. It was months before I realised why, and this realisation brought only more questions. It seemed a mystery without resolution."

"But you never asked him about it?"

"No. What could I have said? And, knowing what we know now, what could he have told me, then? No, I kept my counsel. Perhaps I always knew that a day such as this was coming." Gathering all the sketches back together, he thought of Aramis as he was on the day they'd first met and through all the years since, all that time he'd watched and wondered without ever coming close to suspecting the truth. One thing was certain, "He's adjusted remarkably well, all things considered."

"Perhaps," Athos mused.

"You don't agree?" Treville cocked his head at him, surprised.

Athos looked thoughtful. "No, I do. He has adjusted well. He has a quick mind and had a vested interest in blending in. But he is also extremely good at dissembling, something I suspect he employs more often than we've ever realised."

"What do you mean?"

Athos leaned back in his chair, frowning slightly. "Aramis puts on a big act. We all know this, we see it every day, it's who he is – certainly I've never questioned it. I have fought alongside the man every day for more than five years, I believed I knew him, inside and out, yet now – perhaps only now am I seeing him clearly for the first time." He paused, as if considering his words very carefully before continuing. "There is a very particular look Aramis gets in his eye from time to time. I must have seen it a hundred times, followed always by some joke or evasion, a swift change of subject."

Treville nodded, he knew the exact look Athos was talking about, had noticed it himself without ever thinking to question it, perhaps because it was, as he said, followed always by some neat deflection away from the topic at hand: _look over there, nothing to see here_.

"I never understood what it meant," Athos continued, "And thought little enough of it, until I saw that look again today, when we spoke of the legend of King Arthur – but this time he made no attempt to conceal that he did not understand the reference. And now I believe I know what it means, that look that comes into his eye from time to time, when some mention perhaps is made of a piece of history or culture you or I would take for granted…but that Aramis – or Lancelot – has not encountered previously, because it falls into that thousand year gap in his knowledge. And to which he therefore does not know how to respond, and thus the deflection, to cover this ignorance before it can be remarked upon. He is very good at it."

"He'd have had to be," said Treville. Eleven hundred years was unimaginable. He sighed again. "Well. Now we know."

"Now we know," Athos quietly agreed.


	6. Chapter 6

6

Porthos du Vallon, once a son of the Court of Miracles, now King's Musketeer, sat in the garrison yard at the end of the weirdest day he'd ever known, watching his best friend talking quietly in a corner to a legendary wizard, and tried to make sense of it all.

They'd always known that Aramis kept secrets. They'd even known that a lot of those secrets revolved around his past. The man rarely stopped talking, but there were some things he never talked about, and his past was one of them, any question of where he came from always deflected and evaded with a laugh and a quip. He was too good at it.

Porthos had never questioned it, however, because he too was not fond of raking over the past. Who a man was today was what counted, not where he'd come from. Everyone had a past.

It was just that most peoples' pasts didn't turn out to be something like this. Magic and warlocks. Legend. Death and resurrection, the mere thought of which made his stomach twist. _Eleven hundred years_.

And could this Merlin really be trusted, this long-lost friend and so-called legendary wizard with a young man's face and old man's eyes, who'd happened on them out of the blue and turned the whole world upside down?

Just a few hours ago, life had seemed so simple.

Across the yard, Aramis turned, as if he'd felt Porthos's eyes upon him, and then sauntered over and dropped onto the bench at his side.

"Are we all right?" Intent dark eyes fixed on his face, concerned.

"Yeah, course." Porthos suppressed his doubts. "A lot to take in, that's all."

"I know it well."

"I'll bet. Eleven hundred years." If it was hard for Porthos to wrap his brain around, what must it have been like to experience? "I can't imagine how much the world would've changed in that time."

Aramis smiled wryly. "Everything had changed. And yet nothing had changed. Men are still men. A sword is still a sword."

"And you're still you." That was what mattered. Porthos held out a fist and Aramis bumped his against it, wry smile softening into affection.

"Thank you, my friend."

"Well, you seem to be handling it."

Now a quick grin, self-deprecating. "You didn't see me in the early days. I was taken in by a farmer and his wife – I believe they thought me an imbecile. I knew nothing, I understood nothing. But…" Here an expressive wave of the hands. "I learned. There was little choice."

"And now there's him letting all your cats out of their bags." Porthos gestured with his head at Merlin, who was talking to d'Artagnan now, the youngster listening with rapt attention. They looked more or less of an age, and it did weird things to the head to know that the newcomer was in fact over a thousand years old.

Aramis glanced across, a fond smile playing at his lips. "Perhaps it's for the best."

"You were good friends, then, you and him, back in the day?" If Aramis trusted the stranger, shouldn't that be good enough?

"As much as you and I now," Aramis confirmed with a smile.

"Do you remember the day we first met?" asked Merlin himself, moving closer with d'Artagnan at his heel.

"Hard to forget," said Aramis.

"I was just telling d'Artagnan. Lancelot saved my life," Merlin explained, and Aramis chuckled and picked up his cue with a dramatic flourish.

"Wandering innocently through the woods on my way to Camelot in hopes of making my fortune, minding my own business – and then, out of nowhere, a griffin."

"What's a griffin?" Porthos obliged him by asking, enjoying the shift back to high spirits after the distress of that confrontation in the woods.

"I don't believe they exist anymore – big, fierce creatures, all wings and claws," Aramis cheerfully declared, and Porthos watched him closely and couldn't tell if he was serious or not.

If he was making it up, then Merlin was in on the joke. "The one you killed was the last I ever saw," he said.

"So Aramis killed the very last griffin to save your life?" said d'Artagnan, but Aramis shook his head.

"Oh no, not then – no, I barely escaped with my own life."

"But he did successfully fend it off just as it was about to eat me," Merlin picked up the story. "I believe you were wounded as well, weren't you?"

"Slightly," Aramis confirmed, a hand dropping unconsciously to his side, where Porthos knew he had a scar and had wondered what might have caused it, since it was clearly made by neither blade nor bullet.

The claw of a fantastical beast had somehow never occurred to him.

"And Merlin then offered me a place to stay, which was much appreciated," Aramis brightly continued.

"It seemed a fair exchange."

"I thought so."

"He killed the griffin later," Merlin added, but Aramis again shook his head.

"It was you who killed the beast, Merlin."

Merlin rolled his eyes. "Not this again. Fine, have it your way. I enchanted a lance, which Lancelot then used to destroy the griffin."

"A team effort, in fact," d'Artagnan offered, and both chuckled.

They made quite the double act, Porthos thought, the banter flowing as effortlessly as if they hadn't been apart the however many years it had been since Lancelot became Aramis, and the thousand-odd years Merlin had lived.

It was strangely disconcerting, being on the outside.

"I'm surprised you remember so clearly," he remarked, eyeing the warlock closely, "After living so many centuries."

Merlin became sombre at this, his thin face suddenly wan and drawn. "You'd expect the memories to fade, wouldn't you, after a thousand years – I expected it too. But they don't. Those days in Camelot are the most vivid memories I have, while all the centuries since have blurred and merged and faded. It's part of my curse. If I'm to live until Arthur returns, I have to know him when he does. So I can't forget, not any of it."

The words hung heavy in the air between them. A thousand years. What would a thousand years of living do to a man?

"It's getting late." This was Athos, on his way back down from Treville's office – there had still been the small matter of the mission de-brief to complete, after all. "I think perhaps we should call it a night. Do you have somewhere to stay, Merlin?"

"He can stay with me," said Aramis. "I believe it's my turn."

Later that night, Porthos woke with a raging thirst, and as he headed out to the pump to draw water his route took him past the door of Aramis's quarters, from behind which he heard voices, talking softly in a language he didn't know.

Lancelot and Merlin, with a thousand years to catch up on.

This was a part of his friend that he'd never known, and never could know.

Porthos wondered if things would ever be quite the same again.


	7. Chapter 7

7

"Your French is impressive," Athos remarked, very early the morning after, when Aramis, unable to sleep, gave in at last and ventured down to the yard only to find his friend already there, evidently for much the same reason. "Some odd inflections perhaps, here and there, the merest hint of an accent I never could quite place, but not enough to cause comment. It would never have occurred to me that you were not a Frenchman born and raised."

Aramis choose to take this as a compliment and offered a bright smile in exchange.

"It is amazing what you can learn when you have no choice." But another interpretation of Athos's words also occurred to him and he wavered, suddenly less certain of where he stood, now that they'd all had a night to reflect. "It was not my intention to deceive anyone…no. No, that is not true and we both know it. It was absolutely my intention to deceive everyone. But it was never my wish to be dishonest to my friends."

"You lied to us about who you are from the day we first met," Athos blandly agreed. "But I recall in the main lies of omission, rather than direct falsehoods, and as you know, I concealed my own identity likewise for almost as long, without half as much reason. As friends, we have never pressed one another for details of our pasts."

"Until now." The words escaped before he could censor them.

"Until now." Athos nodded, unperturbed. "When at last we had no choice but to ask, just as until that moment you had no choice but to conceal. We do what we must, brother. We each do what we must. It's all any man can do." He squinted sideways at Aramis and bluntly added, "You look terrible, by the way. Did you sleep at all?"

Aramis laughed softly, relaxing. "Very little," he admitted. Too much to think and too much to say, he and Merlin had spent the hours of darkness talking until they were hoarse of the bygone world they had known and their experiences since, last survivors of Camelot as they were – afraid to go to sleep, almost, for fear they might wake and find it all no more than a dream, yet morning had come and here they both still were.

Except that even now, having left his old friend slumbering peacefully in his quarters, in the bed he'd graciously given up in his guise as host, he still couldn't quite bring himself to believe that Camelot's warlock truly was here, now that he was out of sight. It seemed too impossible to be real. All of it was too impossible to be real, including his own continued existence in this place and time…and it had been a good long while since that particular thought felt as dizzying and bewildering as it was again now, a tumult of conflicting emotion stirred up anew by the storm of exposure and reminiscences shared. Fear and denial and grief and guilt and love and relief and gratitude and confusion and so much more, all grinding and churning together to make both his head and heart spin.

Almost as if he'd read his mind, Athos favoured him with a gentle smile and asked, "How do you feel?"

Aramis rubbed at the back of his neck and shook his head. "Honestly? I'm not sure I could even begin to tell you." He had to try, though. He owed Athos that much. "All these years I've tried so hard to put my past life behind me. To speak of it at all was not possible, it could never be possible. I could never allow myself to _think_ of it, even, it was too much. It was past, it was gone; I was here. So now…" He shrugged, allowed the gesture to say what he could not. "Now that everything is known, I scarcely know what to think. It will take some time, I think, to make sense of it."

"For us all," Athos quietly agreed watching him closely with the eyes of a man who had demons of his own to bear. "For us all."

Around them, the garrison was beginning to wake. Porthos came lumbering downstairs no more than half awake and dropped onto the bench at Aramis's side, bumping shoulders by way of greeting and offering a tentative sideways grin as he wondered loudly what was for breakfast. The message came across loud and clear, _business as usual_ , and if a faintly troubled look came into his eyes when Merlin ambled out to join them, a clear and present visual reminder of the revelations of yesterday, he remained determinedly silent on the subject, as if everything that needed to be said had already been said and he wished now to forget that anything had ever happened at all. He was, Aramis thought, the very best of men, him and Athos both, stalwart and true, their friendship and loyalty an anchor in uncertain times.

D'Artagnan, by contrast, had plenty to say when he arrived at the garrison a little later, wondering just a shade too nonchalantly if Aramis might like to read the works of Chrétien de Troyes, should they find their way into his hands.

"Who's Chrétien de Troyes?" Aramis asked, bemused by the apparent non sequitur.

"A poet," said d'Artagnan. "My father," and he faltered only slightly at the mention of the father he'd so recently lost, "had a complete collection of his works, they sat on the shelf alongside the family Bible, I grew up reading them. He wrote a lot about King Arthur – and Lancelot."

 _Oh_.

Aramis busied himself pulling a target out of storage and into position in the garrison yard rather than look the boy in the face. As enticing as eternal glory sounded in theory, in practice it turned out that the very idea of these legends they'd spoken of was discomfiting, and the name of the poet unfamiliar. "I never met him."

D'Artagnan helped him with the next target. "Well, no, you wouldn't have. He lived in something like the twelfth century."

Aramis lifted an eyebrow, kept his tone light and his expression neutral. "Then what could he possibly know about my life?"

D'Artagnan hesitated. "That's a good point, actually. He must have heard the stories somewhere. If you read the books you might find out if he got any of it right. Don't you want to know what he wrote about you?"

Aramis considered the question for a moment. Did he? "No."

"Really?" D'Artagnan's nose crinkled. "I'd want to know."

"Are you so sure?" _History has a way of twisting_ , Merlin had said, _I'm not sure you'd recognise what legend has made of us; I've heard many tales that I know aren't true_.

How might it feel to read such twisted tales, to encounter distorted accounts of the people he'd once loved and to know what untruths had passed into popular belief, without any means of setting the record straight? And what of the time after his death, the fates of those he'd left behind – how could he ever know what was real and what was false?

Aramis shook his head. "I know what I remember, who my friends were. I have no desire to see what was written of us by a stranger hundreds of years after the fact, when there was no one left who knew the truth."

No one but Merlin, that was, and he wondered now how much these legends had been influenced by the stories his old friend had admitted telling over the years to countless generations of children, who would have remembered only fragments as they grew, imagination later filling the gaps to turn fact into the fiction he was so reluctant to explore.

Busily pulling the third target into position, d'Artagnan stilled. "Do you miss it?"

Did he miss it? When _it_ encompassed so very much, how could he not? Perhaps he should have anticipated such a question, but he hadn't, and it hit home without any defences prepared.

Aramis looked away quickly as a startled, "Yes," escaped unbidden. It was a truth he'd only rarely allowed himself to feel over the years, because if he let himself dwell on what was gone he'd be consumed by it, but the reunion with Merlin had stirred it all up, all the memories he'd kept buried for so long. The sights and sounds and smells, faces and voices and smiles of _home_ , vivid still in his mind, yet lost to the ages with no going back, and he did miss it, God help him, he did. Perhaps tomorrow the sensation might be stuffed back into its box and nailed shut once more but today of all days there could be no denying it.

D'Artagnan looked a little awkward now. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." Aramis set about straightening the targets by way of keeping busy while he said this, the philosophy that had kept him going ever since the day he woke up in the snow. "We've all had our losses. It is what it is. The past is gone. My life is here now – it's more than most people get." He flashed a quick grin at his young friend. "Where else would I have the satisfaction of beating you every time you think to challenge me?"

The diversion worked, as it always did. D'Artagnan laughed. "One day, Aramis, I will make you eat those words."

"But not today," Aramis teased, pleased with the success of his distraction.

"We'll see, we'll see." D'Artagnan stopped suddenly in the act of pulling the musket rests into position, as if this next thought had only just occurred to him. "Where did you learn to shoot, anyway? I didn't think they had muskets in the sixth century."

Not such a successful distraction after all, then.

"We had crossbows," Aramis replied evenly. "It is not such a different skill as all that. Then when I came here, I discovered gunpowder." He grinned, remembering the thrill of it, the first moment he'd been able to truly embrace this new life. "And there really was no looking back."

He had little choice but to look back now, though, as the questions came thick and fast – either the most fascinated by the subject or simply the least tactful, d'Artagnan couldn't seem to let it drop, new questions occurring to him all the time, tossed out in odd moments here and there, seemingly at random:

"So what was King Arthur actually like, in person?"

"Was there really a round table?"

"What about the Knights of Camelot, what were they like?"

"Did Arthur really go searching for the Holy Grail?"

On and on, relentless and earnest, well-intentioned and genuinely interested, eager to learn, but the more he asked, the harder it became to delve into that once-sealed past, with too much already laid bare.

So Aramis prevaricated, said, "He wasn't yet king when I knew him," knowing all the while that this was not the detail d'Artagnan was interested in, and, "Yes," a simple truth stated without further explanation, and, "They were soldiers, men of honour, much like the Musketeers today," an honest and heartfelt reply given again without elaboration, and, "Not in my lifetime."

The evasions came instinctively, defensively, a balancing act, answering each question with truth while also saying as little as possible, because…it wasn't that Aramis didn't want to talk about his former life, now that he could, it was more that…no, he didn't want to talk about his former life. That much he quickly came to realise, now that he could. It was what he'd tried to explain to Athos, who understood, and what d'Artagnan in his youth and inexperience could not yet understand: that he'd spent too many years burying the past deep to feel comfortable picking at the scabs of those old wounds now. If you picked at old wounds, they bled, Savoy had taught him that much, and he felt exposed enough as it was. Speaking of Arthur meant remembering Arthur, all that he was and all that he stood for, and speaking of his fellow knights meant remembering his fellow knights, so many dear and trusted friends lost to the ages in the blink of an eye. The beautiful city of Camelot and everything in it, Guinevere…

The magnitude of it was the thing. Aramis was a soldier, had been his entire adult life, and as such had known a great many losses and had mourned for each one, but nothing, not even Savoy, could compare to the loss of everything and everyone Lancelot had ever known in a single shattering moment of dislocation. He'd spent years attempting to make peace with it and move on, living always in the _here and now_ and never allowing himself to look back on what was gone, so to have it all stirred up again now, more and more with each question asked, left him feeling increasingly raw.

It was difficult to speak of even with Merlin, who had known the same loss in a different form, once the initial heady rush of reunion was over and reality began to hit home once more – perhaps especially with Merlin, because Merlin _was_ Camelot, the living, breathing embodiment of all that was gone, each memory they shared as much torment as comfort, bringing the past close enough almost to touch and yet forever out of reach.

And from time to time he caught Merlin's eyes resting upon him, and wondered if his old friend felt much the same way about him.

In the days that followed, Merlin moved out of Aramis's cramped quarters to take up residence instead in the draughty room that served the garrison as a makeshift infirmary, which became his domain in a manner reminiscent of Gaius. He came and went like the wind, but slowly the garrison at large became accustomed to his presence, a bumbling, unassuming figure overlooked by most of the men.

Someday, Aramis thought, he might himself even grow accustomed to the sight of Camelot's warlock among the Musketeers of Paris, representing the collision of his two worlds.

After a few false starts, Merlin mostly even remembered to use the name Aramis, rather than Lancelot, at least in public; a mixed blessing, for as much as Aramis clung determinedly to his new identity, the old having died with him, it would never feel natural to hear that name from Merlin's lips. Anonymity remained vital, however, perhaps even more so than ever, if Merlin was to be believed. The warlock was resolute in his resolve to investigate the meaning of Lancelot's resurrection in this century, long after Aramis had given up all hope of ever comprehending the mystery, but offered also dire warnings as to the possible dangers of the endeavour.

Aramis couldn't quite decide how to feel about the prospect of learning the truth at last, after so long, but when Merlin insisted that he could not take any part in the investigation, in case they accidentally stumbled into the magician unprepared along the way, he wasn't about to argue. He remembered too well what Morgana had made of him.

"I know. I agree," he said, and felt the eyes of Athos upon him.

"You _really_ don't want this magician to know where you are." It was not a question.

"No, I do not," he fervently agreed. It was the one thing he'd felt sure of from the moment he awoke in the snow.

"Why look for him at all, in that case?" d'Artagnan artlessly wondered.

Merlin gestured wildly at Aramis as he explained, "Because a magician capable of _this_ almost certainly won't stop there," and Aramis felt the eyes of his three Musketeer brothers fall upon him, Exhibit A: the one and only example they had of what dark magic was capable of.

It would not, perhaps, seem all that much to them, his death and resurrection no more than an abstract concept, without the weight of actual experience behind it – they'd never known Morgana, hadn't seen the things she could do. They couldn't hope to fully understand.

Part of him hoped they never would, even if it meant never finding the answers he yearned for as much as he feared.

"I knew something was stirring." Merlin paced about in agitation. "I've felt it for a while. I just couldn't pin it down – like glimpsing something out of the corner of your eye. It's been so long since I encountered anyone else who had magic, I almost thought I was imagining it. But Lancelot is proof."

And again all eyes turned to Aramis, who nodded wearily. He'd always known what his resurrection meant.

"There's a magician out there somewhere," said Merlin. "A magician with great power, and if he or she is planning something, building up to something bigger, we need to know, we can't risk being taken unawares. Plus," he added, almost as an afterthought, "Since whoever it is went to all the trouble of raising a man who'd been a thousand years dead, they're probably going to be a bit peeved to have lost him, which means they'll most likely want to find him again. So again, probably better to find them first than be taken unawares."

"If a dark sorcerer is left unchecked, things can only get worse," Aramis quietly agreed, remembering how quickly Morgana had spiralled out of control.

"Then why haven't you looked before?" d'Artagnan wondered.

"Because I was alone before," Aramis pointed out. "Safer to remain hidden in hopes of them not catching up with me than to go poking around drawing attention to myself. Alone, what could I have done even if I had traced my mysterious benefactor? I know little about magic –"

"You know more than I, I'd wager," Athos drawled.

Aramis tipped his head, conceding the point. "I don't know enough. I've seen what magic can do; I have no power of my own. But now that Merlin is here, things are different."

"We just have to be very careful," Merlin stressed.

Of the tight fellowship of six who knew the story of Lancelot, Porthos was the one who'd struggled with it the most, so it came to Aramis as something like relief, when the big man celebrated his birthday, to go out and indulge together in strong drink and shooting games, a reaffirmation of their friendship.

Then Porthos was framed for murder, and the rush to clear his name also uncovered a dastardly plot to destroy the slum quarter of Paris in which he'd been raised, at the potential cost of hundreds of lives.

For Porthos, being brought face-to-face with his former life did not end as happily as it had for Aramis. At the end of it all, to save his friend's life, Aramis was forced to kill a man Porthos had once called friend, and watched as his brother struggled with the knowledge of how far this former friend had fallen from the standard he himself aspired toward.

"I'm sorry, my friend," he murmured, much later, as the last of the evening's light slanted across the table where they sat in the garrison yard, sharing a bottle of something potent. And he was sorry, indeed, to have taken the life of a man Porthos cared for, however necessary, in that moment, it had been.

Porthos shook his head unhappily. "Not your fault. Charon made his choice. What must you think of me, eh? Beggar boy from a den of thieves."

"Not a bit of it. I see only a Musketeer."

"Says the legendary knight."

Aramis still laughed every time anyone mentioned that; to have his name immortalised in legend seemed beyond absurd for the small part he'd played in the history of Camelot.

"You've no more idea than I what those legends say," he pointed out. It was a source of relief that at least one among his friends was as ignorant as he of what legend had made of him. He was not tempted to look, even now, as the dust began to settle and a new equilibrium emerged. The part of him that was still Lancelot did not want to know.

But Porthos began to look shifty. "I might have had a bit of a look, here and there. Can't blame a man for being curious. All you knights were noblemen, weren't you, like Athos?"

"They were," Aramis conceded, wondering with some dismay what else Porthos had learned from these fables, and just how much truth any of them contained; it was a rare thing for his friend to allude to his past at all, still less ask questions about it. "But I was not, not even close, which is why my dream of becoming a knight was just that, a dream – until Arthur changed the rules. My past is not so very different from yours." He thought now of a tiny village that no longer existed, and the struggle life had become for the boy orphaned by its destruction. "We each did what we must to survive, then were granted the opportunity to become something more. Life is what you make of it, my friend, and you have made more of yours than most."

Porthos smiled now. "I'll drink to that."

So they did.

A new equilibrium emerged. Nothing had really changed, after all. Cardinal Richelieu continued to scheme and manoeuvre behind the throne of King Louis XIII, and the Musketeers continued about their duties. Athos drank, Porthos gambled, and d'Artagnan pined for the lovely Madame Bonacieux. Aramis was aware that Queen Anne's eyes lingered on him as often as his lingered on her, and he knew they were both dreaming, a fantasy of what could never be.

Everything was normal, and yet everything was also forever changed, and at the centre of that change: Merlin. Merlin the impossible, alive and well and himself, just as cheerful and good-hearted as he ever was…yet also a thousand years changed, even as the passage of time and bitter experience had left their inescapable mark on Aramis himself, and they brushed up against those changes in unexpected ways, as they slowly became reacquainted.

"Well this is a new skill," Merlin exclaimed in surprise the first time he saw Aramis stitching a wound, wandering into the infirmary far too late to be of any assistance. "Where did you learn to do this?"

Aramis had been the field medic of the regiment for so long now that he'd almost forgotten it was a thing he'd learnt here, in this time, rather than a role he'd always played.

"Siege of Montauban," he cheerfully replied without looking up. "You're not the only one who can learn new tricks."

"I heard about that one," Porthos piped up through gritted teeth; he was tolerating these stitches with rather more grace than was his usual wont, which was a mercy. "It was a bloody mess."

"That it was," Aramis quietly agreed. "As is this, so keep still or it will be crooked and my reputation ruined."

"You never took any interest in medicine before," Merlin remarked, stepping closer to examine his handiwork.

"I was young," Aramis reminded him. "And it wasn't the way, at Arthur's court, the idea would never have occurred to me. Gaius was there – and you. What more could be needed?"

"So what changed?"

"Gaius is not here, and neither were you."

Merlin only lifted an eyebrow at that – glibness, it seemed, was not going to get him out of a proper explanation this time. Aramis sighed and gave in.

"I had been stabbed during the battle," he said. "Just here," and he indicated the spot, just beneath the pectoral muscle, left side, saw Merlin's eyebrows shoot up at the suggestion of such a wound.

It was, in truth, one of his more impressive scars, this one more than any other seeming to underline the point that death apparently did not want him. To date, that injury remained the best chance it had had to reclaim him. That and Savoy.

"I was with Monsieur Chaubert's company at the time – this was before the Musketeer regiment was formed, perhaps a year or so after…well, after I came to be here. When I was still…" How to put this? "Struggling a little to find my place in this brave new world."

With so much already known, his whole past laid bare, it was easier to confess the confusion of that time than he might once have expected, and both men were listening intently, he noted; Porthos might not be asking many questions, on the whole, but that didn't mean he didn't want to hear the answers.

"A man named Desmoines sewed me up. Saved my life. He was the one decent medic we had, and more casualties than he knew what to do with, so as I recovered he taught me to assist, take some of the pressure off." He tied off the last stitch and cut the thread. A neat job, if he did say so himself; Desmoines would have been proud. "Alas, I was unable to repay him in kind when he was wounded himself – shot in the head, killed instantly – but I have built on what he taught me ever since."

"Best seamstress in the regiment," Porthos loyally declared.

With the aid of a map and a lot of patient questioning from both Merlin and Athos, the location of the place where he'd been reborn was narrowed down, bit by painstaking bit.

But not enough. They managed to identify the district, but could get no closer than that. He'd simply been in no fit state at the time to take note of any landmark by which the precise location could now be identified. The farm at which he'd stayed that winter was the only real clue, but he was unable to say either from which direction he'd approached it or how far he'd walked through the snow before collapsing at the door.

"To be honest," said Merlin at last. "I think the only way we're going to find the exact spot is if we wait for the next snow, take you there, and then just wander around the district randomly until you recognise something, and I don't actually think it's worth all that effort. I doubt we'd really find anything there, not after all this time. Unless of course the sorcerer just happens to live right around the corner still and only took his eye off the field long enough for you to wander off in the first place – in which case we really shouldn't take you there, just in case."

Just in case. Just in case said sorcerer retained some talisman used in the spell, which might be used to take control of his mind and body as Morgana had done, once upon a time. The prospect remained as disquieting as it had ever been. Lancelot had been raised that first time as a shade, but Aramis felt whole, complete, fully and entirely himself, and had done since the moment he awoke in the snow. It was disturbing to know, as Merlin had confirmed, that even so he might yet be robbed of his very being and made to serve the will of another.

Until the sorcerer was found and destroyed, that possibility would continue to hang over his head and he would never truly be free.

"Then this avenue of research is a dead end?" said Athos.

"I don't know. It was worth a try," said Merlin, looking very old. "It all adds to the bigger picture."

There were days, Aramis thought, when Merlin seemed as he ever was, but today was one of those days when the weight of the centuries he'd lived was writ large upon him. For most of that time, his old friend freely admitted, he'd avoided any and all close companionship, having already outlived every friend he'd ever had. It was too hard, he said, to watch generation after generation grow old and die all around him, so he closed his heart to them, kept moving always and never looked back.

Immortality, for Merlin, was a curse. And Lancelot's was not the resurrection he'd been waiting for through these long years.

Aramis was too well aware of the many ways in which he himself had changed since the days of their youth together in Camelot to offer any comment on the alteration he saw in his friend. They were each what their lives had made of them.

In Paris, intrigue was endless. The return of the Queen Mother, in direct defiance of the terms of her exile, brought with it the hint of a scandal that threatened to overthrow the very throne of France. A royal heir, it seemed, had been concealed from the world all the days of his life, and that heir had left a child, a child of royal blood, abducted by Marie de Medici as a pawn for her power play.

Aramis was assigned as escort to the child's mother, an innocent and warm-hearted woman who had done nothing to deserve the torment imposed upon her.

"Have you ever felt it?" she asked in despair, grieving for her stolen child. "Love? I mean real, true love? That need that leaves you incapable of existing without the other person?"

The answer to that question was over a thousand years past. Aramis had enjoyed the company of many women during his years in France, loving each one wholeheartedly for as long as they were together, but without ever allowing his heart to be truly engaged. His younger self, he'd always known, would not have condoned such behaviour, and with Merlin now at hand as a constant reminder of who he'd once been, something of Lancelot's principle had perhaps been reawakened. He'd avoided all such frivolous entanglements since Adele Bessette, and had cared for Adele, certainly, with her playful heart and pretty face, even fancied himself in love – but the love of which Agnes was speaking?

No. No, for real, true love he had to look much further back, to another time and a more innocent life. And so he sat in the kitchen of Madame Bonacieux and spoke to Agnes of Gwen, who was good and kind and generous, and had loved him back until fate drove them apart, and then chose another man.

"A better man," he added, because even then he'd been unable to resent Arthur for his interest in Gwen, and what did it matter now, when they were all long since gone to dust?

Agnes, like Gwen, was good and kind and generous, and he found himself making to her a solemn vow for the safe return of her child, just as he'd once promised Gwen the safe return of Arthur.

Then, fulfilment of his vow had taken him to his death. This time, with his Musketeer brothers at his side, success was achieved without such a cost, and for the first time since Gwen he found himself wondering if such love might be possible for him again someday, if he could only bring himself to allow it.

Agnes took her son into hiding, Marie de Medici returned to her exile, and life in Paris went on as ever, full of plots and schemes.

Merlin took to borrowing Musketeers for his investigations, now Athos, now Porthos, now D'Artagnan – never Aramis, as that restriction remained in full force, for all that the exclusion made him restless, but they came back each time with new rumours to ponder and a story to tell, and he watched as his Musketeer brothers slowly embraced his old friend as one of their own.

He watched also as Merlin slowly but surely allowed himself to become attached, in a way he claimed he'd avoided for centuries now, and wondered at times if his friend regretted it, doomed as he was to outlive them all.

Were they any closer to finding the sorcerer, or a means of unmaking his power if they did? The answer varied from day to day and week to week.


	8. Chapter 8

8

Charles d'Artagnan, not yet a Musketeer for all his fervent hope and effort, called in at the garrison infirmary one day just in time to see the wizard Merlin use his magic to light a brazier, and the only thing that surprised him was that he was no longer surprised – how fast the extraordinary could become commonplace.

"Not very covert," he observed. "I could have been anyone."

"I saw you coming," he was told with a cheeky grin. "I'll just be a sec."

While Merlin pottered, d'Artagnan leaned against the doorframe and looked around at a room that had been transformed since the warlock moved in, the accumulated clutter and general disorder of a communal space that no one had time for until it was needed now brought into order and made homely, supplies neatly organised and floor swept clean, bunches of dried herbs hanging at the window.

He stepped closer to examine the assortment of roots and leaves, unsure what they were, and thus was at the window just in time to see Constance Bonacieux stepping through the arch into the garrison yard.

D'Artagnan had seen her not an hour ago, at breakfast. Still he felt his heart skip a beat at the sight of her here.

Merlin was busy. D'Artagnan almost tripped over himself in his haste to get back out to the yard to see what Constance wanted.

"Someone's in a rush. Don't hurry on my account," she teased, and then went on to explain that her husband had asked her to remind him that the rent was due, so she'd come to the garrison in hopes of catching him.

It was an excuse. He knew it was an excuse. The rent could have waited. The reminder could have waited. She'd have seen him soon enough. But she'd chosen to come anyway.

He was happy to see her.

This, however, was hardly the venue for a private conversation, the yard crawling with Musketeers already taking a keen interest in the beautiful lady come to call. As they brought the horses out, Porthos and Aramis gave him knowing looks, amusement in their eyes. He didn't care. An extra glimpse of Constance was enough to set him up for the whole day.

She caught his eye and smiled, and it warmed his heart, and then Aramis brought him his horse while Merlin appeared to take the other from Porthos, and Constance asked where they were going.

Such a simple question, and so impossible to answer without betraying a truth that no one could know. Not even her. Valiant Constance who had braved so much, the wisest, most open-hearted person he knew, but he couldn't tell her this because it was not his secret, and because too many people already knew, because it endangered lives and was too incredible to believe.

He floundered, and stepped back while the others filled the breach with a fabricated story, much the same as the excuse given for every other excursion Merlin had taken since his arrival.

They could hardly go around telling the world he was investigating occult rumours in hopes of finding the magician who'd brought their friend back to life after a thousand years, after all.

Constance would never tell a soul, d'Artagnan knew she would never tell a soul, but the secret was not his and they'd all of them made together the decision to maintain it, no matter what, so he allowed the others to tell her an untruth and wished it could be otherwise.

As they travelled, Merlin asked d'Artagnan about Constance, earnest and sympathetic, not the slightest hint of teasing or amusement, and before he knew it d'Artagnan had started to talk and couldn't stop. He spoke of Constance's warmth and her heart and her courage, of her boor of a husband, and of how much more she deserved from her life.

And from there, somehow, they moved on to his own hopes and dreams, his impatience to become a Musketeer, after this prolonged apprenticeship, and his eagerness to prove himself.

Merlin smiled now and counselled patience, sounding every inch the very old man he truly was behind that youthful façade, and said that d'Artagnan reminded him of another young man he'd once known, just as eager and impatient to join the king's elite guard. He'd interfered, he said, tried to bend the rules to help his friend, but succeeded only in making things worse.

"We're talking about Lancelot here, aren't we?" d'Artagnan guessed, and received his answer by way of an impish grin. He'd given up trying to coax information about his former life out of Aramis, but Merlin could usually be persuaded, and sure enough launched into the full story with very little prompting required.

It was perhaps a little underhand, his conscience warned, to use a third party to gather information about the past his friend was so reluctant to speak of, but d'Artagnan had grown up on stories of King Arthur's Court, his father had taught him to read with the works of Chrétien de Troyes, and the allure of having two of the actual characters from those tales in his life was more than he could resist. The gulf that lay between the stories he'd read and the truth of what had actually happened was especially fascinating to him, and he comforted himself that Aramis would surely prefer him to know the true stories, even if he couldn't quite bring himself to be the one to tell them.

Merlin, on the other hand, had no such difficulty. He seemed to enjoy talking of the past, and d'Artagnan enjoyed listening, and now relaxed into the journey as Merlin expounded at length on the subject of the young Lancelot's first arrival in Camelot, full of hope and ambition.

D'Artagnan had only ever known Aramis as a seasoned soldier and veteran of many campaigns, but he thought now of that sketch of Sir Lancelot Treville had shown them, little more than a youth, fresh-faced and boyish yet instantly recognisable. That was the Lancelot Merlin had known, evidently as thwarted in his ambitions as d'Artagnan felt now.

Lancelot's day had eventually come. Surely d'Artagnan's would too.

It was fascinating to watch the way Merlin operated. D'Artagnan had no idea how the wizard had even found the old crone he'd come to visit, in a tiny village somewhere to the east of Paris.

Chasing rumours, Merlin called it, pulling at strands to see how they unravelled – a whisper here, an echo there, sifting through for whatever truth might be gleaned from the chaff.

Mostly, so far, he'd learned that people were afraid, but not in a way that would ever have drawn official attention, more of a background susurration of fear, echoing in dark places. Superstition, d'Artagnan would once have called it. Smoke and mirrors. Small-minded people, ignorant and frightened of shadows.

He knew better now, caught the resonance of what he knew to be truth in the whispers Merlin patiently drew from first the old woman, and then a half dozen others they visited on this outing.

There was nothing new here, at first, these rumours no different than any others they'd heard – but then at last a name came up, spoken in fear with much glancing over shoulders in fear and trembling, as if the mere mention of the name might invoke the magician.

Maugris.

"I've heard of Maugris – I thought he was a myth," d'Artagnan said as they set off on the return trip to Paris, and then he heard what he'd just said and realised who he'd said it to and added, "Of course, I also thought you were a myth, so what do I know?"

"As much as I do, apparently, because I thought he was a myth, as well," said Merlin, frowning.

"You did? Then what does this mean?"

Merlin considered the question. "It means, I suppose, that either the legendary Maugris himself is finally coming out of hiding – or our necromancer has borrowed his name."

 _Necromancy_ was not a pleasant word, and d'Artagnan felt sure he would never be comfortable hearing it applied in relation to Aramis, but that was what they were talking about, it was what they were investigating – and now they had a suspect at last.

Even if that suspect was still mired deep in the shadows.


	9. Chapter 9

9

Athos had been more than usually melancholy of late, but Aramis was fairly certain he couldn't claim credit for it, even if the revelations of his past had turned the man's entire worldview on its head. No, the mood pre-dated those revelations, could be traced back to their visit to the former Comte's abandoned estate, which had unravelled his own hidden identity.

They had more in common, it seemed, than they had ever known.

Whatever the cause, this morose mood was contagious. Or perhaps it was simply easier to blame Athos for his mood than the situation for what it was.

It was, after all, distinctly uncomfortable to be at the centre of an investigation into the occult, with the promise of danger at every turn, unable to assist and yet intimately involved. Investigating the occult meant upending all manner of stones to watch what came crawling out, and Aramis watched as his friends grew more and more uneasy with what they were learning along the way, and knew that he was the cause of it all. Not by choice, perhaps, this had none of it been his choice, not his resurrection or the revelation thereof, but still.

Athos and his prevailing air of melancholy definitely weren't helping, however.

"You must be careful no one finds out," he warned, returning from the latest fact-finding expedition with Merlin in a particularly sombre mood.

Aramis knew it well and always had, but sought anyway to brush the caution off with a sunny smile. "I'm always careful," he said. "How many years did we know one another without you ever suspecting a thing?"

"I'm serious," said Athos, and Aramis wondered what had been said in particular on this trip to unnerve him. "Something is stirring out there, in the shadows. The people are scared. Public feeling runs high at the very suggestion of the supernatural. If any hint of your past were revealed, you know as well as I that the Cardinal would not hesitate to use such popular excitement as an excuse to invoke the very heaviest of sanctions."

Aramis had, he thought, been better off when no one knew, when he had only his own concerns to worry about, without others adding their fears to the heap. "Even if such an allegation were made, the Cardinal could prove nothing," he argued, wishing he could believe it so simple, but Athos shook his head.

"No evidence would be required, the accusation alone would be sufficient to condemn," he said, and then added, "You are an idiot, but I would not wish to see you come to harm. So be careful."

"I always am," Aramis assured him.

And so it was that when the Comtesse de Larroque was accused of witchcraft by the Cardinal, eyes firmly fixed on her fortune and suspicions fuelled by resentment of her independent spirit, Aramis found that his sincere sympathy for her plight was heightened by the certain knowledge that should the truth of his past come out, he would be condemned as a revenant to the same terrible fate: to be burned alive at the stake. So he gave to her the crucifix awarded him by Queen Anne for saving her life, which had, he believed, brought him luck ever since, the best and only talisman he had to offer as comfort in her hour of need.

That the Queen would see Ninon wearing this token and react with dismay, he had not anticipated.

He wondered what it meant, even as he knew that it could not mean anything at all. The Queen was the Queen and he her humble servant. And yet.

 _He truly did not understand this thing that had grown between them – admires her beauty and grace, certainly, but this is more than that – her gentle heart and generous nature, the strength of her spirit, her courage, her endurance – the more he sees of her the more he admires – is aware that she admires him likewise and has taken pleasure in it_

That they were drawn to one another, there could be no doubt, it had become a source of considerable pleasure for him to admire her beauty and grace from afar and to feel that she admired him likewise, she was a remarkable woman, caring and compassionate…but she was also his sovereign and the wife of the King. They might, perhaps, feel infatuation for one another, but that was all it could ever be. That had to be all it could ever be.

He remembered Gwen, remembered that Morgana had used him to destroy her life. Such a thing could not be allowed to happen again.

He would not make of Anne another Gwen.

D'Artagnan's long-awaited commission arrived in the fullness of time, and for his first mission as a fully-fledged Musketeer they were assigned to escort the Queen on her annual pilgrimage to take the waters at Bourbon-les-eaux.

Aramis enjoyed the trip at first. It felt good to escape the city for a time, the beauty of the place a taste of paradise, almost, and respite from the tension of Merlin's ongoing search and what it might bring. The novelty of the isolated spot quickly wore off, however, and then became a source of danger when a gang of armed assassins made themselves known.

A desperate cat-and-mouse chase ensued, Queen Anne in her shift riding before him on his horse, the warmth of her body pressed tight against his chest, quivering faintly from fear she sought not to show.

They were too far from safety to have any hope of reaching it intact. The group split – Porthos and D'Artagnan for Paris, to sound the alarm, and Aramis and Athos with the Queen to a nearby convent, the only possible source of shelter for miles around.

They were, inevitably, besieged almost at once.

The rush of blood through the veins that accompanied such a battle could not be described. It pounded, fast and furious, as the musket balls flew all around. Aramis and Athos took a window each from which to mount their defence, and shot down as many of the assassins as they could hit from this scant vantage point, escaping injury themselves by only the narrowest of margins as enemy fire peppered the walls around them. The sisters made firebombs from brandy and rags, vehement in defence of both their home and their queen, while Queen Anne herself helped to prepare ammunition, desperate to be of some use.

The convent was old, its walls crumbling. The assassins broke into the cellar and one of the sisters was killed before they could be driven back.

What was the earliest they might dare hope for reinforcement? How long could they possibly hope to hold out?

Only the coming of night brought respite from the onslaught, temporary though this reprieve was. Rest, however, was slow in coming, with the distant and persistent sound of hammering as a constant reminder of the clear and present threat. These assailants were not going to back down, were even now, through the dark of night, preparing for some new attack.

Aramis sat in a hard-backed wooden chair outside the Queen's bedchamber, readying his pistols for the fight still to come and trying not to think of what the morning might bring. Ammunition was running low. They'd thinned out the assassins a little, but remained hopelessly outnumbered: two men against four or five times that number, with the life of the Queen in their hands. What chance did they have?

He'd died twice already, as Lancelot, and had never understood why death had not held him. As Aramis, he challenged death at every turn, daring it to reclaim him. If it took him here, would it hold this time? If his life was given in defence of the Queen, did that offer purpose enough to his resurrection?

He felt eyes on him, looked up to see the Queen in the doorway of her bedchamber, watching him. How long had she been there?

He jumped up, flustered, and the Queen became flustered in turn.

"Forgive me, I startled you." She stood there in her shift, slender and delicate and nervous, her voice low. "What are they building?"

He had wondered that himself. "Battering ram, perhaps, or a ladder." Worse possibilities existed, but there would be time enough to worry about those. "You should rest, Majesty."

"I cannot sleep. Who could? With that sound – it became oppressive and I felt need of a friendly face, the sound of a voice…"

"I believe I may offer both. Will you sit?"

She refused the chair, fingers worrying at the hem of her sleeve. "If we had not come to this place, Sister _Hélène_ would be alive this night."

"You must not think so," he urged, knowing it was true but instinctively seeking to reassure her regardless. None of this was her fault.

"Why should I not, when others die on my behalf?" She took a step closer, her eyes seeking his, and he read in them her pain and guilt. "I may be cossetted but I am not without heart."

He knew it well, had seen her warm and generous spirit many times.

"We left Caroline in the dirt where she fell, abandoned my ladies to their fate," she went on, and it was true, in the desperate flight for her life, there had been no time to think of the ladies-in-waiting left behind; in crisis, choices must always be made and the options were not always good ones. The Queen's life had to be the highest and only priority – and that, of course, was her point. "We brought the deadliest of dangers to the door of these sisters…why should my life be held of more value than theirs – or yours?"

He evaded the question. "The House of God is a place of sanctuary for anyone in need, it has always been so. I am certain the sisters would not have it otherwise, even now." He hesitated. "As for me, I do my duty, your Majesty, wherever it may lead, even to death."

As it had once before, so very long ago.

She looked away, bitterness entering her eyes. "All this because I cannot conceive a child."

Her voice was low; he was not certain he had heard aright. "Majesty?"

"I make this pilgrimage each year, every year, hopeful always that this time my prayers might be answered," she said, eyes seeking his once more for this most personal of confessions, a small, faltering step bringing her closer still. "I bring my loyal companions and guards far from the safety and shelter of Paris, to a place that cannot be defended, and this is the outcome."

Then she caught herself, became flustered and reached out, her fingertips brushing his arm.

"I'm sorry, I do not mean to imply criticism – you and your fellow Musketeers could not have done more. Always my faithful champion, Aramis." And her fingers reached for the crucifix she had given him, returned by Ninon de Larroque when she was saved from the pyre and worn always about his neck, the best and only talisman he possessed.

In a very few hours now, the assassins would resume their attack. If his restored life was given for hers, he knew it would be worthwhile, so long as she lived.

The Queen was very close now. Too close. He felt the danger and knew himself to be falling, murmured, "I am your servant, Majesty."

A moment later he felt her lips on his, sweet and warm, no longer queen but woman, flesh and feeling…

The face of Guinevere flashed before his eyes, streaked with tears.

He jolted back, and saw shock in Anne's face as the movement brought her back to herself.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm sorry."

He shook his head. "The fault is mine."

Too close, too close – he could not make of Anne another Gwen.

"The fault is mine," she insisted. "I should not…"

He breathed deep, tried to calm himself. "This night holds many perils. We each, I believe, sought comfort in that moment."

She dropped into the chair, head bowed. Around them the convent slept, silent and still; in the distance the constant hammering, a warning of danger yet to come.

"May I ask a very personal question, Aramis? Have you ever been in love?"

Agnes, he recalled, had asked the same, and the answer had not changed.

"Once," he said. "A long time ago."

"What happened?"

"She chose another man, a better man."

"I was little more than a child when they gave me in marriage," she said. "The choice was never mine to make. Spain married France to seal an alliance – what chance could I ever have to know of true love?" Her eyes sought his, wistful and yearning. "In another life, perhaps, I might have made my choice here tonight."

"In another life, perhaps." His throat dry, Aramis looked away. He had had three lives now, of a sort, but in none of them had the choice been his. Such affairs were much easier when the heart was not engaged, whatever principle might say.

Still, although Lancelot's last memory of Gwen was one of despair, she had in fact been happy in the end, Merlin had assured him. Arthur had forgiven her, had made her his queen, and she had continued to rule for many years after he was gone, a long and illustrious reign.

He wished the same now for Anne.

She continued to talk, as if by so doing she might drown out the sound of the assassins hammering down below. She talked of her childhood and family, of her concerns about the ever-present threat of war with Spain her marriage had been intended to avert, of her fear that they might none of them live to see another day, and Aramis, for his part, listened to what she had to say and offered what comfort he could, told silly jokes and anecdotes to raise both of their spirits, and was delighted when he managed to make her laugh.

She fell asleep there in his chair, in the end, and he carried her sleeping back to her bedchamber, thinking bittersweet thoughts of what could never be.

Reinforcement came in the very nick of time, when the last shot had been fired and all hope seemed gone.

They returned the Queen safe to Paris, and Aramis tried to forget what had happened between them – and what had so nearly happened between them.

Fortunately, there were plenty of distractions, as the Musketeers devised a cunning plan to unveil the Cardinal's involvement in the assassination attempt, a plan that included faking the death of Athos in order that D'Artagnan might win the trust of the Cardinal's chief agent, Milady de Winter.

That Milady was the estranged wife of Athos added an extra layer of intrigue to the affair.

The day was won. The Cardinal was defeated. Milady fled. And news from the Palace proclaimed that the Queen was at last with child. It seemed the waters at Bourbon-les-eaux had worked their miracle after all, in answer to years of prayer.

Aramis tried again not to think of what might have been, in that other life.

Merlin's investigations into the man who called himself Maugris began at last to bear fruit, suggesting that the magician had first appeared in France only a few years earlier, which implied that he was a newcomer using the name, and not the actual sorcerer of legend. He'd arrived in France from overseas and, rumour had it, had been searching for something ever since.

Something like a mislaid revenant, perhaps.

The danger felt much more tangible when it came with a name attached – more so again when definite movements could be traced. Maugris, it seemed, had arrived in France at about the same time that Lancelot left the farm and took the name Aramis – and his first destination, by all accounts, had been that very district. They had missed each other, perhaps, by only a matter of days.

Merlin began at once to make plans to travel to the area himself after all, to see what else might be learned.

It was one thing, Aramis thought, to know that his mysterious benefactor was out there somewhere, and even to suspect that the magician would likely wish to find him – another thing entirely to have evidence that this dark enchanter was actively searching for him.

He'd remained safely hidden for years, anonymous within the ranks of the Musketeers.

How much longer could his luck hold out?


	10. Chapter 10

10

It was Porthos who travelled with Merlin to the district where Lancelot had been restored to life in the snow some years earlier, taking in, while they were at it, the isolated farm where he'd stayed that first winter, having sifted through his imprecise memories of the event enough to finally pinpoint the place.

They arrived to find that someone else had got there before them, and the whole district was running scared.

Maugris the Magician had been there, that elusive character whose shadow they'd chased halfway around France and back, and here he was stepping right out into the open. He'd been there, only days earlier. He'd had a lot of muscle with him and he'd been seen performing magic, openly, at least once…although the villagers who'd seen it were reluctant to admit it, certain they wouldn't be believed – and perhaps not quite believing it themselves.

Not so long ago Porthos would have thought them mad or dreaming, but he knew better now.

No one in the village Maugris had hit knew the man's name, not his real name, but he'd been there before, they said, a number of times over the years, always asking questions and poking around, searching for something.

Searching for Lancelot, who'd been brought back to life in one of those fields out there, in the middle of nowhere, but had left the area before the magician could arrive.

It was a remote area, the farms and villages thinly spaced, so the magician had failed to trace his quarry all these years…but now at last he'd found that farm, the farm where Lancelot had stayed, right before he became Aramis, and what he'd done to that harmless old couple didn't bear thinking about.

"Aramis," said Porthos grimly as they headed back to Paris in sombre mood, "Is going to be upset about this."

"I'm upset about this," Merlin replied. On the outbound journey he'd been full of high spirits, swapping stories about their mutual friend, chattering and laughing away like no man's business; Porthos had been looking forward to getting back to Paris and seeing that suspicious look Aramis got in his eye: _what have you two been telling each other about me now?_ Now, though, Merlin had slid into one of his old man moods, quiet and grave, with a look on his face that made it a little easier to believe he was over a thousand years old.

Yeah. Anyone who'd seen that would be upset by it. This Maugris was not messing around, not anymore. All these whispers they'd been chasing had suddenly turned into something bold and brazen, an escalation that was frankly alarming.

But what did he want with Aramis? They seemed no closer than ever to finding an answer to that question.

"What I still don't understand," Porthos said, "Is how come this magician lost track of Aramis in the first place? I mean, I don't know much about magic, but how do you lose a whole person you've just brought back to life?"

"It probably means," Merlin suggested, his tone reflective, as if he'd been mulling over that question himself, "That Maugris made a mistake."

Porthos looked at him steadily until he elaborated.

"Raising the dead isn't easy, you know – it isn't meant to be easy. It isn't meant to be done at all. And this was a _very_ complete restoration. I mean, I've been practicing magic for over a thousand years, and I don't even know what it would take, all the elements involved," Merlin explained, gesticulating wildly as he spoke. "I've never made a study of necromancy, of course, but what I think probably happened is: Maugris got _nearly_ all the elements right, but not all of them. The resurrection itself went perfectly, body and soul restored in perfect balance. That was the miracle – and you've no idea what a miracle it is. But he didn't manage to lock it down geographically, probably thought it would happen automatically. Only it didn't, so instead of being brought back wherever Maugris was, Lancelot just got dropped into the middle of nowhere – and by the time Maugris managed to trace where the spell landed, he'd already moved on."

"Maugris must've been furious," Porthos remarked. "But what does he want? Why do it in the first place, why all that effort to bring Lancelot back?"

"I don't know." Merlin looked very grave. "But I think leaving the area and changing his name was the wisest thing he could have done."

'Wise' was not a description that was often applied to Aramis.

"You're really scared about this, aren't you?" Porthos eyed Merlin shrewdly. "Scared about what might happen if Maugris finds him. Aramis is, too – and I've known him a long time now, there isn't much scares him, he'll stare down the barrel of a gun and never flinch. But he's scared about this."

"He should be," Merlin quietly replied.

"Because you think this Maugris could take control of his mind?"

Merlin looked him straight in the eye, solemn as the grave. "More than his mind – his soul. We can't allow that. I won't watch him robbed of his entire being, not again."

Again. Because something like this had happened once before, and neither Aramis nor Merlin liked to talk about it, so that no one really knew exactly what had happened, only that it was bad. And they were both afraid this could end up being even worse.

Merlin let out a loud sigh now, a rare display of frustration. "At least when it was Morgana I knew her," he said. "I knew what she could do, how she thought. I could predict what she might do. But this Maugris? Complete mystery. I hardly know where to begin!"

Porthos found himself missing the old days, when the worst they had to worry about was whatever the Cardinal was up to now.

"Well, at least we got a lead this time," he offered. He was well and truly out of his depth where magic and magicians were concerned, and it made his blood boil to think that some crooked wizard meant harm to his friend, but he knew where he was where the mechanics of an investigation were concerned, and focusing on practicalities made him feel less helpless, like there was actually something useful he could do to help.

As horrible as their grim discovery at the farm had been, this had turned out to be the most productive leg of the investigation yet. In that village nearby where the people were running scared, they'd been given a name, a contact in Paris who might know more, someone believed to be connected with Maugris.

"We'll go straight there," said Merlin.

"You don't want to stop at the garrison first, bring the others up to speed?" Get reinforcements, he didn't quite like to add.

Merlin shook his head slowly. "I think Maugris is closer to finding us than we are to finding Maugris. We can't afford to waste any time."

They found the man who'd been named in the village as a contact of Maugris. Michel Ferrand. He was an apothecary, a sly, shifty little man who tried to play innocent at first before turning malicious when they weren't convinced by the act, and then outright malevolent when Merlin snuck past the front room of his shop and uncovered a hidden chamber beyond, filled with old grimoires and occult symbols of the sort that would have Cardinal Richelieu preparing a pyre without delay.

No actual magical power, though, apparently, which was a relief to Porthos when he grabbed the man to prevent his escape and wasn't incinerated on the spot or turned into a toad, or anything else of the sort he was half expecting if and when they finally caught up with this Maugris.

Caught red-handed, Ferrand snarled and spat, jeering that he would rather die than betray his master – and then he caught sight of the pauldron at Porthos's shoulder, with its _fleur-de-lis_ design, and his eyes lit up.

"It's true then," he said, almost breathless with sudden glee. "Maugris was right. He is with the Musketeers."

Porthos felt cold all over, as if someone had poured a bucket of ice over his head, and saw shock in Merlin's face.

"What did you say?" he demanded, his most menacing voice, willing it not to be true.

Ferrand laughed spitefully. "Maugris always knows. He was right! He's with the Musketeers. You're not him – but you know where he is, don't you –"

Porthos hit him, hard, and knocked him out cold, reached for a curtain rope to bind him with – rapid movements, no time to lose.

"They know," he said, a tremor of dread in his voice. "Maugris knows. We have to get back to the garrison."

"Maugris doesn't know what he looks like," Merlin offered, almost as if trying to convince himself. "Or the name he's using."

"Yeah, but we know he's been to that farm, talked to the old couple. He knows their name, d'Aramitz. It's not exactly a huge leap from there to Aramis, if someone tells him there's a Musketeer of that name," Porthos pointed out, heaving the unconscious prisoner over his shoulder for transport.

Merlin stared at him, wide-eyed, nodded, and darted for the door. Porthos followed.

"If you were serious about being able to magic the two of you far away where you'd never be found," he said as he slung Ferrand over the neck of his horse, "Now might be a really good time to try it."

"We have to find him first," Merlin grimly replied.

Aramis wasn't in the garrison yard when they came charging in. Nor were any of the others.

"I'll check his quarters," said Merlin, darting off, while Porthos caught the stable-boy to take charge of both horses and the prisoner and thought to ask while he was at it if the lad knew where Aramis was.

The boy gave a garbled and horribly ominous account of a message, something about Saint-Sulpice – and Aramis would have had no reason to suspect.

"No, no, no, no, no." The pretext used didn't matter. Porthos didn't wait to hear any more. He ran, yelling over his shoulder for the boy to find Treville or Merlin or Athos or anyone to tell where he'd gone, sprinted all the way, cursing himself for his slowness, and got there too late.

Night was falling, the church in darkness. Aramis had been taken by surprise, must have been, and was being spirited away by a gang of hooded men even as Porthos arrived.

Porthos charged into the middle of them, roaring – took a few down, as well, before a tall figure stepped out of the shadows, hand raised, muttering under his breath.

A flash of brilliant light hit Porthos right between the eyes and he knew no more.

"I walked straight into the trap," Aramis muttered, some unknown length of time later when they'd both awoken to find themselves chained to opposite walls in some unidentifiable dingy cell. He looked pale in the dim light of the moon filtering in through a tiny window, a thin trickle of blood dribbling down his face from a cut above one eye.

"You didn't know how close they were," Porthos told him, testing his chains and finding them solid. He tried again. Still no give. "That's what we learned, on this trip – we didn't get back in time to warn you."

He tried wrenching at the chains now, bellowing, furious – still nothing.

"Temper, temper, Sir Musketeer," said a new voice as the door to their cell swung open. The tall figure that entered was familiar to Porthos from Saint-Sulpice, and he needed no introduction to know who it was.

"Maugris."

"My fame precedes me," the wizard mocked. He looked like a wizard, too, far more than Merlin did: old, with stringy white hair and a flowing robe, beard long enough to tie with a ribbon. He looked like someone who'd read in a book what a wizard ought to look like, and had modelled himself accordingly – which, Porthos thought, he probably had.

The wizard had in his hand a large stone medallion, and as he crossed the room Porthos saw that the shapes carved into this medallion were somehow glowing with a faint luminescent light, and he had a good look because it was to Porthos that the wizard came first, regarding him with some degree of irritation.

"I must apologise for dragging you here with us, Sir Musketeer, however you did force the issue rather." Maugris held the medallion up to give him a good look. "I've brought this to make plain to you both that any attempt at denial is futile."

He turned to Aramis now, his eyes lighting up with something that looked a bit like greed and a bit like anger and a bit like very deep and vindictive satisfaction, while Aramis looked as if he'd quite like for the wall at his back to swallow him whole at this point.

"Sir Lancelot. I've waited a long time to meet you. Too long. I was a fool. All these years spent scouring the land, wondering where Sir Lancelot could possibly have gone. I see now that the King's guard was the very first place I should have looked for the legendary Knight of Camelot."

Aramis muttered under his breath something that sounded extremely rude in that unfamiliar language he and Merlin still used when they thought they were alone, the long-dead language of Albion. Maugris stepped toward him now, the medallion held high so they could both see, and it was glaringly apparent that it was getting brighter and brighter the closer it came to Aramis, who visibly blanched at the sight, twisting in his chains trying to pull away.

But there was nowhere to go, no means of escape.

Maugris chuckled. "This talisman was used to restore you to life, Sir Lancelot. See how it recognises the soul bound to it." He got right up in Aramis's face now, almost spitting the words. "It has been a very tedious business, searching for you all these years. I do not appreciate being kept waiting."

Aramis met his gaze head on, glared back with all the fury a man in chains could muster. "What do you want from me?"

"Oh, you are very precious to me, more than you could possibly imagine. All the other elements are in place. All I have been waiting for is you, and the waiting is finally over. There will be no more delays. I am not getting any younger, alas, and for that, I hold you entirely responsible. I had planned for this many years ago, before my joints began to ache, before my beard was quite so white. But my long wait is over at last. We begin at midnight."

"Begin what?" Porthos demanded, pulling at his chains again, trying to distract the madman from his friend, if only for a moment. "What are you going to do?"

Maugris whirled around, as if he'd forgotten he even had a second prisoner. Then he said, in conversational tone, "Sir Musketeer. Do you know who your friend really is?"

"Of course. What about it?"

"Does it not bother you that he is a revenant?"

"He's a _person_ ," Porthos stoutly declared, looking over the wizard's shoulder to meet his friend's eyes as the only comfort he had to offer. "What are you going to do to him?"

"Oh, I have big plans. Would you like to hear them? Would it make you feel better to know the worst? Perhaps you'd like to hear that once upon a time a young boy had a teacher who told the most fantastic tales – and that one dark day that boy happened to see his teacher performing magic, and realised that all those stories were true."

"Merlin." So the warlock hadn't always been as careful as he liked to believe. How many children had he tutored over the years? Had he told his stories of long-ago Camelot to them all, living always in the past? Was this Maugris the only one to guess the truth?

Maugris smiled smugly. "You might like to know," he went on, "That when this boy became a man he devoted his entire being to the study of the dark arts, desperate to learn more, to emulate what he'd seen. He discovered great power within himself – and perhaps it might interest you also to know that this man harboured a great and terrible ambition, to outstrip his old teacher and take his place as the greatest wizard this world has ever known. Is that what you wanted to know?"

"No," said Porthos. "Because you still haven't said what it is you're really up to."

Maugris smirked. "No, I haven't."

"All right, then." Porthos tried a different tack. "Tell me this instead. Why him? Out of all the dead people who've ever walked this world, why did you bring Lancelot back?" And over the shoulder of Maugris he locked eyes with Aramis once more. This, he knew, was what his friend had wanted – needed – to know all these years.

"For the poetry of it," Maugris replied with a shrug.

"What poetry?"

There was spite in the magician's smile now. "Merlin spoke of Sir Lancelot a great deal, the dear departed friend who gave his life to save the kingdom. If I am to surpass Merlin and take his place as the greatest wizard this world has ever known, who better to supply the means than his own dear friend."

" _What means?_ " Aramis hissed the question now, straining at his chains. "What do you want from me?"

Maugris turned, looked him up and down appraisingly for a moment. "We're not quite ready to begin the ritual just yet. Please feel free to talk among yourselves while you wait."

He swept out of the room once more, taking his talisman with him. As the door slammed shut, Aramis slumped back against the wall, despair written in every line of his body.

A ritual, Maugris had said.

"It'll be all right," said Porthos, wishing he could feel as certain as he attempted to sound. "The others'll find us."

"How?"

"We took a prisoner, me and Merlin – friend of Maugris. That's how we knew he was on to you. They can question him." The man had seemed pretty loyal, but there was no sense in telling Aramis that. He had enough to worry about. "They'll get the place out of him. I know they will."

"But will it be in time?" Aramis dully wondered.

Porthos couldn't answer that question, had no further reassurance to give. They fell into an uneasy silence, precious minutes ticking by. What was Maugris up to out there? How long did they have before he came back to do his worst? Was there any chance at all of the others getting here in time?

Quiet, in Aramis, was always a bad sign. The silence felt oppressive, as if the very walls were closing in. Porthos couldn't stand it any longer.

"Lancelot." It was the first time he'd ever called his friend by that name, and it had the desired effect. They both needed a distraction. "Tell me about Guinevere."

It was very probably the last thing Aramis would have been expecting him to say. "Why?" he cautiously asked.

"I'm curious. It keeps coming up in those stories you don't want me to look at. King Arthur and Queen Guinevere…and Lancelot."

Aramis looked away. "I can imagine what they might say."

"Then set the record straight. I got nothing better to do here."

For a moment, he thought Aramis was going to refuse, but then he sighed and shifted in his chains, an air of resignation about him now. "I never knew Queen Guinevere. Gwen was a servant at the palace when I knew her."

"A servant? The queen? Really? The stories don't mention that."

"They should," said Aramis. "It matters. Arthur didn't care about status. He cared who a person was. He should be remembered for that. Gwen was lady's maid to the Lady Morgana, and later attended King Uther when he became incapacitated. She was the most generous soul I've ever known, she'd do anything to help anyone – she knew great sorrow, but never became bitter, always so warm-hearted and kind. And she was beautiful – the most radiant smile in the world."

"You loved her," said Porthos, watching his face as he spoke. He'd seen Aramis with women many times, had seen him fool around and had seen him infatuated, but he'd never seen quite that look in his eye before.

"I did," he softly confessed. "I loved her – and she, I believe, loved me, at least for a time. But…circumstance was such that I could not stay in Camelot, not then. So I left to seek opportunity elsewhere, and when I returned…Arthur had become close to Gwen, and…I loved them both too much to come between them. So that was that. And then – and then I died, and that was an end of it. It should have been the end of it."

That was not the story told in the legends, and 'should have been the end' meant it wasn't, and Porthos already knew he wasn't going to like what he heard next.

"Some time later, Merlin tells me, Arthur decided to break with all tradition and make Gwen his queen," Aramis quietly continued. "He could have had his choice of all the fine ladies in the land, but he wanted her – and she deserved it. But Morgana by this time had become a powerful sorceress and was enraged at the thought of a servant on the throne she believed should be hers. She wished to prevent the marriage, so she…she raised Lancelot from the dead – no more than a shade, no independent thought or will. And she set him between them."

The moon had moved in its course across the heavens, its light slanting sharply across the cell so that Aramis's face was now in deep shadow, unreadable. The switch to speaking of Lancelot in the third person was noted by Porthos without comment.

"What happened?" he gently prompted.

Now a faint shrug visible through the gloom of the cell, an edge of bitterness in his friend's voice. "Lancelot seduced Guinevere, and Arthur found out. Gwen was banished from the kingdom, never to return –"

"But she did become queen," Porthos protested, caught up in the story in spite of himself. "Least, that's what the stories say."

"Arthur was a generous man," he was told. "He forgave her the indiscretion, in time. Or so Merlin tells me."

"And Lancelot?" he hardly dared ask.

"Lancelot," said Aramis, his tone detached, as if speaking of a stranger, "Was already dead. Again. Morgana had no further use for him, so she bade him die and he did. And then he woke up in the snow and learned that a thousand years had passed."

Porthos had no idea what to say.

"My friend, you can have no idea what it is to be a prisoner in your own mind," Aramis quietly added from the shadows across the room. "Watching, helpless, as you are made a puppet to the will of another, used as a weapon to harm those you care about most."

"It won't happen again," Porthos promised him. "I don't care what it takes. I won't let it happen again."

A rattle and clatter now as Aramis abruptly pulled forward to the very limit of his chains, pale-faced and intent. "You must break the talisman, Porthos. Any chance you get, the first chance you get: break it."

"And what happens to you if I do?" Porthos demanded. "If that thing really is bound to you, what happens to you if it breaks?"

Aramis shook his head firmly. "If my life is bound to such a trinket then I truly am no more than a revenant. Please, Porthos. It must be done. Promise me you will do this, you won't hesitate."

"And if you die because of it?"

A faint pause as he considered – then, with a terrible note of fatality, "Perhaps it is time."

"No." The objection came like instinct, an innate refusal to accept what was being asked of him. "No, I'm not having that. We'll find another way –"

"And if there is no other way? Porthos, please. Promise me you will do whatever you must to prevent that madman achieving his aim. Whatever it takes."

"Probably won't even get the chance." Porthos rattled his chains impotently once more.

"Porthos…"

"Yeah, all right!" It came out more angrily than he intended – or perhaps he did intend it, furious with the whole world for bringing them to this. "I promise."

They came for Aramis not long after that, a bunch of robed and hooded men who weren't interested in talking.

Aramis fought, the moment his chains were loosed, kicked, punched, ducked and rolled, but there were too many of them and too small a space in which to fight. He was quickly overpowered and bludgeoned heavily into submission, kicked in the ribs for good measure, and then dragged away.

Porthos rattled his chains and roared after them in impotent rage.

He'd made a promise – one he desperately didn't want to have to keep, but he'd made it nonetheless. Only he was no use to anyone stuck in here.

The silence and gloom of the cell were more oppressive than ever now that he was alone, trapped and helpless while that madman did who knew what to his friend. He tried wrenching at the chains, heaving till his wrists bled, but was unable to break free. He tried to calculate how long they might have been here and how long it might take for the others to extract information from Ferrand. Could help possibly come in time? Was there any hope at all?

The cell door opened again, and for a moment he almost allowed himself to believe it was them, arrived in the very nick of time – but it was Maugris who stepped across the threshold, smiling maliciously.

"Where is he?" Porthos demanded at once. "What have you done with him?"

Maugris ignored both questions. "I feel I must apologise to you, Sir Musketeer, for the unpardonable disruption of your day. Allow me to make it up to you. You will not, of course, leave this place alive, but I can at least offer entertainment in your final hours. What do you say?"

"What entertainment?" Porthos growled.

"Why, the ceremony, of course. It is the reason we have kept you alive until now. I feel an audience would only be fitting. Don't you wish to see the moment I change the world?"

"Change the world _how_? What is this all about?"

There was more than a hint of madness in the smile that played at the wizard's lips.

"Oh, it really is remarkable what you can learn, if you are prepared to commit to the research," he said. "Once I had discovered that magic was real, I devoted my life to its study. I thought I must be dreaming when I learned of this particular ritual, which grants both supreme power and eternal life…which would, perhaps, have been better achieved as a young man, like Merlin, but I remain vigorous even now – and now I shall live forever. I will wield power such as this world has never known. Merlin is weak. He has the power to rule the world, yet chooses to hide in shadows. When that power is mine, I will bring the world to its knees."

"You are completely mad." Porthos stared at him in horrified disbelief. "But what does any of this have to do with Lancelot?" It felt safer, somehow, to use the name of the long-dead knight rather than the name his friend had adopted for his new life. As if the two could be kept separate, somehow.

"This ritual contains many elements, very rare, very precious, almost impossible to obtain. I have spent my life and fortune hunting them down, until at last only one more was required, the most vital ingredient of all: the blood of the living dead."

It took a moment to sink in. "You brought a man back from the dead after a thousand years so you could use his blood to cast a spell?"

And he'd been chosen, Maugris had already said, out of sheer spite at Merlin. It beggared belief.

"It wasn't easy, either. Imagine my frustration, after all that time and effort, when Sir Lancelot could not be found."

Porthos tried wrenching at his chains again, more convinced than ever that he was talking to a lunatic. "Why waste all that time searching for him, then – why not just try again with someone else?"

"You think it that simple? The talisman you saw is the last of its kind in the entire world, and once used to raise a soul it is bound to that soul for life and cannot be used again. I used it to raise Lancelot, for this one purpose, and that choice was a whimsy, perhaps, but once made it could not be undone. No other would do, and the time is now at hand. We are almost ready to begin – and I cannot quite remember what we decided. Did you wish to watch the ceremony or not? It should be quite a spectacle."

"I'm going to stop you," Porthos told him. "I don't care if it's the last thing I do. I won't let you do this."

But Maugris only laughed. "You are, of course, very welcome to try. It should prove entertaining."

Maugris wasn't actually offering a choice – he wanted an audience beyond his own acolytes, and Porthos was it by default. Since, however, Porthos wanted very much to get to Aramis and find out what had been done with him, he allowed them to take him from his cell without resistance, and along the way he took note of every detail he could make out and asked as many questions as occurred to him, the most important of which, to his mind, was this: how much blood did the ritual require?

"A drop," he suggested, more in hope than expectation, "A thimble-full – a cup?"

"All of it," he was told, and was dismayed but not surprised, but Maugris did somehow seem to think it would be of comfort to him to know that the bleeding would be slow, "to allow the power to build."

It took all the restraint Porthos could muster not to shake himself free of his guards and try to kill the man where he stood, but he remembered the bright flash that could only have been magic which had taken him down at Saint-Sulpice, and kept his peace. He needed to remain conscious, needed to be ready to act when the time was right, and this was not the right time.

It felt like the right time when he was led into a large chamber, flaming torches arrayed around the walls, its contents almost indescribable, occult items he couldn't even begin to put names to. Toward the end of the room was a kind of altar, the talisman used to raise Lancelot from the dead taking pride of place upon it, still glowing brightly, its unnatural light almost pulsing, like a heartbeat. Just in front of the altar the stone floor had been carved in an intricate pattern, spiralling out from a central point, above which Aramis hung by the wrists, limp and still, his feet just barely brushing the floor. He'd been stripped of his uniform, shirt torn open to bare his chest, the side of his face streaked with blood where he'd been struck.

It felt like the right time and all restraint was lost. Porthos roared and rammed the guards holding him, slamming two of them into one another and a third into the wall. Room full of goons, getting Aramis down from there in the scant seconds he might have was out of the question, but he could get to the altar, to the talisman – do something, smash something, anything that might prevent the ritual…

He was thrown to the floor in a brilliant flash of light that knocked the breath right out of him.

Maugris. Magic. Of course.

Before he could recover, he'd been manhandled to the wall and securely chained in place once again.

He'd failed, and the opportunity was lost.

Porthos kept both eyes fixed on Aramis, hanging unconscious at the centre of the room, while Maugris taunted him for his failure and sneered that he'd been kept alive and conscious to witness this.

A blood sacrifice was apparently, reasonably enough, much easier to perform if the subject were not struggling, and the wizard seemed, again, to think it would be of comfort to Porthos to know that his friend wouldn't actually be aware of what was happening to him, out cold like this.

It wasn't.

Midnight came, and, while Porthos wrenched at his chains and bellowed and raged, Maugris picked up a knife and began.


	11. Chapter 11

11

Merlin had not spent any amount of time among soldiers since those long-ago days of the Knights of Camelot, but had been with the Musketeers of Paris long enough now to understand why Lancelot – or Aramis, as he now chose to be known – felt so at home with them. Not permitting himself to become attached to any place or person had become deeply ingrained habit, after such long, weary centuries of existence, but he'd felt that habit coming under threat during his time here, because it was Lancelot and he was already very much attached, their old friendship reformed as if they'd been apart no more than a day, re-awakening a heart that had long since grown cold, and Lancelot's friendship with these men was so deep that it carried Merlin along with it in spite of himself. He had at times almost resented them for making him care, the losses of the past vivid still in his mind, but he was grateful for them now, in this moment of crisis.

It took hours to break Michel Ferrand, hours they didn't have. Hours that Lancelot and Porthos didn't have.

Merlin had no stomach for interrogation, even now, after his centuries of life, but it was necessary here. He even considered offering to take his turn, but knew instinctively that even should he reveal his magic, it would neither frighten nor impress the man, stalwart devotee of Maugris as he was. So instead he left the Musketeers to it and occupied himself with preparations for the rescue mission.

Everything Merlin had managed to learn of Maugris over the last months suggested that the magician had been in France only a few years but had formed a considerable power base in that time, operating in the shadows where he would not be suspected until it was too late. Nothing, however, offered any insight into what his plans were – or for what purpose he'd chosen to raise Lancelot from the dead.

Merlin knew his reputation as the greatest wizard who'd ever lived, and he knew his own power, but he knew also that he'd always felt himself to be making it up as he went along, with no grand plan ever, he simply strove to do what he knew he must, when he must. Once, he'd done what he knew he must to protect Arthur and Camelot. For centuries, doing what he must had meant hiding in shadows, just as Maugris now did, living in the world but not of it.

Not for a thousand years had he felt the thrill of urgency he felt now.

Merlin had not pitted his power against a fellow sorcerer in many centuries and knew he was ill-prepared for this fight, yet fight he must – both for Lancelot, and to protect the people of this land from whatever Maugris had planned.

The Musketeers came charging out to the stable, the location Ferrand had given up at last on their lips.

There was no more time to lose.

The house Ferrand had named was on the outskirts of Paris, a quiet location with few neighbours – a fact that was no doubt of great benefit to Maugris, in whatever he was up to within.

They arrived as a team of four: Merlin, with the Musketeers Athos and D'Artagnan and their Captain Treville, who to Merlin was still Jean-Armand, the forty years since he'd taught the boy a mere nothing compared with the centuries he'd lived.

There were guards at the door, hooded and robed, acolytes of Maugris, but they had no magic and were easily despatched by the Musketeers. Gaining entry to the house was the work of a moment, and it swiftly became apparent that Maugris, perhaps due to arrogance and despite his abduction of two Musketeers, was not anticipating any interruption. Once past the external guards, there was little or no security to be found, not until they had moved deep within the house, reaching at last a vestibule area where more of those robed and hooded figures guarded a doorway leading to the room beyond.

Whatever Maugris was doing, he was doing it right now, Merlin realised, hearing from behind that door a rush of wind that he recognised as the by-product of great and terrible magic, accompanied by the discordant hum of chanting, and the voice of Porthos, bellowing in incoherent and unreserved panic.

Were they already too late?

Merlin looked to the three Musketeers at his side and read in their eyes fear and alarm and unwavering resolve, their course of action silently agreed.

Stealth was essential here, so that no warning of their imminent arrival should reach the occupants of that room until it was too late. The attack was launched, swift and deadly and as silent as could be achieved, and while the Musketeers dealt with the guards, Merlin darted for the door.

Beyond, he found a scene such as he'd not witnessed since the days of Morgana and her repeated attacks on Camelot.

He took in the scene at a glance. Acolytes of Maugris arrayed about the room, their fervent chants approaching a fever pitch; Porthos chained to the wall, in imminent danger of tearing his arms from their sockets as he fought desperately to escape; flaming torches guttering wildly in their brackets in the unnatural wind that swirled the room, casting long and dramatic shadows that danced all around…

And at the centre of the room: the ritual in progress.

Maugris the magician with his arms raised high – the altar at his side – Lancelot hanging by the wrists above an occult symbol carved into the floor, its deep and winding grooves running with blood...

And all of them – Maugris, Lancelot and the altar – lit up with the blinding, blazing fire of power unleashed, tendrils of energy crackling back and forth between them like lightning.

What had Maugris done?

A memory was tripped – the specific elements arrayed across the altar, the symbol carved into the floor, the blood-sacrifice of a man raised from the dead…Merlin knew it, he'd seen it, read it, many years ago, so long that he couldn't recall now the name given to the ritual, but he remembered what it was for and he remembered the dire warnings that accompanied it, for anyone foolish enough to make the attempt. The elements required were so rare, so impossible to obtain, he'd thought the thing harmless and only some innate sense of precaution had led him to search out and destroy every copy he could find, just in case.

He'd clearly missed one. And Maugris had found it.

Could it now be stopped, having already begun?

The attempt must be made.

The altar, he knew instinctively, was the key. Both Maugris and Lancelot were locked in their place by the transfer of energy, but the altar was the fulcrum between them, the weak spot.

The acolytes were already stirring, reacting to his presence. Merlin knew he'd never reach the altar on foot before they could reach him. He aimed a blast of magic at it –

And Maugris reacted, from within the cocoon of raw power that engulfed him – sent his own bolt of magic shooting out to deflect and destroy Merlin's before it could reach its target.

The element of surprise was lost – Maugris was aware of him now, and his power was great, drawn directly from the very firmament through this ritual he was attempting…but that ritual was not complete, not until the very last drop of blood had been drained from the sacrifice, and while it remained in progress the magician was restricted, bound in place by the very power flowing into him, which meant there was still a chance.

The acolytes were upon Merlin now and he had no weapon beyond his magic, which he used to flick the first assailant away. A moment later the Musketeers were at his side, swords and pistols in hand. There could be nothing in all their training that would ever have prepared them for this, but they fought regardless, fought furiously, buying him time.

Merlin began to run, charging for the altar, aimed another bolt of magic at it – but again it was deflected, and a second later another blast caught his heels, sending him crashing to the ground.

He was out of shape, out of practice, hadn't fought like this in centuries, his opponent gaining strength by the second, forced to duck and weave as bolt after bolt of raw magic was hurled at him.

And he could see Maugris clearly now, an old man, vigorous and proud, but with a face Merlin knew, or had known, once upon a time, and the realisation was terrible, he'd always believed himself so careful but knew now his own mistake.

Francis Croke, the boy had been called, the last pupil he'd taught before leaving the land now known as England and crossing the Channel to France for a needed change of scene. He hadn't stayed with the family for long, something about the child had disturbed him, an instinctive reaction he'd not felt since Mordred, and he should have known then, he told himself now, should have done something, should have done anything other than leave and bury his head in the sand, because Francis Croke had become Maugris, and the power Maugris was drawing into himself was terrifying.

Diving for cover from yet another blast from his opponent, Merlin glanced frantically around in search of inspiration and caught sight of Porthos, still chained to the wall, still fighting with all his might to free himself, eyes fixed not on the chaos of the fight but on the limp form of Lancelot and the altar just beyond him.

Merlin caught his eye, just for a second, and knew that he understood, somehow, what had to be done. The acolytes were fighting the other Musketeers, and Maugris had eyes only for Merlin – but Porthos, unheeded by all, might just get through.

It took but a second to cast a quick spell to release the Musketeer's chains. Then, as Porthos began to run, Merlin threw himself from cover and charged at Maugris, gathering all the might he could muster for a full-on assault that he knew would not penetrate the shell of the magician's gathering power, but might at least hold his attention, just for the precious few seconds required.

Their spells met head on in a shower of fire that sent Merlin reeling. He rallied, tried again, met with similar result.

But Maugris, he knew, had not seen Porthos, who reached the altar and plunged both hands into the fiery blaze of energy streaming from it without hesitation. He caught up the large stone talisman serving as the central altar-piece and dashed it to the floor, where it shattered, then swept the remaining contents of the altar to the ground for good measure and collapsed gasping for breath, cradling his burnt hands.

The connection so abruptly severed, the stream of occult energy flailed uncontrollably for a perilous few seconds, releasing Lancelot and winding about Maugris, who screamed now in sudden fear as the breach he'd made in the very fabric of reality began to seal itself – and sucked him in with it.

In a blinding flash of light, the magician was gone.


	12. Chapter 12

12

Aramis awoke, not for the first time, feeling cold and wondering why he wasn't dead.

He opened his eyes to find himself in the garrison infirmary, swathed in blankets – and D'Artagnan, sitting nearby, almost fell off his chair.

"You're awake!" he exclaimed, and then swiftly amended this statement of the obvious to, "I mean, hi. Welcome back. We weren't sure you were going to wake up."

Through the fog he vaguely recognised as concussion, Aramis digested this statement and examined his decidedly fuzzy recent memories for clues that might explain how he'd got from where he had been to where he now was. He came up blank and was forced to ask, "What happened?"

"It's over," said D'Artagnan, rather unhelpfully. "We don't really understand exactly what happened, but the magician was destroyed and you're not dead, so we're calling it a win. I'll just get the others – don't try to get up!"

He dashed out of the room.

Aramis promptly tried to get up and failed miserably, finding himself both weak and sore. Further examination revealed a bandage about his head and another tightly wound around his chest, the familiar pinch of stitches in the flesh beneath. The last thing he remembered was fighting not to be taken from that cell, knowing that once they took him it was the end…

"I thought I told you not to try to get up." D'Artagnan came bouncing back into the room, followed by Porthos, who strode straight across to the bed to grip Aramis's arm and squeeze his shoulder with heavily bandaged hands, and Athos, who stood back to regard him appraisingly.

"You look better," he drawled.

"It seems I missed all the excitement," Aramis said, in a weaker voice than he'd have liked.

"Oh, you did," D'Artagnan confirmed. "You really, really did."

"I thought I'd killed you for a moment there," Porthos abruptly added, eyes glinting, voice gruff.

Aramis weighed this statement, realised, "You broke the talisman."

"Made a promise, didn't I?"

He'd known what he was asking, and what it might cost, but he'd also known with every fibre of his being that it must be done. Accomplished, it meant he was free, truly free, for the first time since he awoke in the snow all those years ago. Aramis reached for his friend's hand to squeeze his fingers, whispered, "Thank you," and felt him squeeze back.

"How do you feel?" Athos asked.

He considered the question for a moment. "Cold," he offered at length. "Tired."

"Tired?" D'Artagnan protested. "You've been asleep for days!"

"You have a head injury," Athos informed him. "And you lost a great deal of blood. You will have some interesting new scars to explain to the ladies."

"You'll have to make up an exciting story to impress them, maybe pretend to have been slightly more actively involved in the drama than was actually the case," D'Artagnan cheekily suggested, and then added, rather more seriously, "Merlin says your body was used as a conduit for a massive amount of occult energy. It drained more than just blood. That's why you feel cold. It'll take a while to recover."

"You always said you wanted to know the reason you were brought back," said Porthos. "Well, now we know. You were brought back to life by a complete nutter because he wanted to use your blood as an ingredient in a magic spell."

Aramis blinked, absorbed this new piece of information and weighed it against his expectations.

"Everyone should have a purpose in life," D'Artagnan solemnly declared with a twinkle in his eye, and somehow this teasing made it all seem all right, came as relief, assurance that it truly was over, but Aramis caught Athos watching him.

"Are you all right?" the other man asked.

He nodded, because he really was, in spite of everything. He was home and all was well. "I always knew my benefactor's intentions would not match my own. It's over, that's what matters."

"And you didn't die after all," Porthos added, with some not inconsiderable relief.

Aramis leaned back, considering. "What does that mean?"

"It means you definitely aren't a revenant, in case you were wondering." This was Merlin, entering the room with a noxious-looking brew and a broad smile. He proffered the cup. "Here, drink this. It tastes awful, but it will help, I promise."

It really did taste awful, but it was warm and lit a very welcome fire in his belly. He sipped gingerly. "What am I, then?"

He'd wondered that since the day his life was restored, and knowing the purpose behind that restoration did not answer the question.

Merlin tutted and sighed. "Bad news, I'm afraid," he said, deadpan. "You're just you!" And then, as D'Artagnan and Porthos both chuckled and even Athos smiled, he added, "Okay, I mean, technically, you were dead and now you're alive, which means you are still the living dead, which means your blood does still hold a certain occult potential, for anyone that way inclined – but so long as you don't actually _mention_ that fact to any passing lunatics with delusions of grandeur, you should be fine."

"I'll bear it in mind," Aramis told him.

"The talisman that restored you to life was bound to you," Merlin said, more quietly. "But you weren't bound to it. And it's gone now. So, welcome to the rest of your life, Lancelot."

Treville entered now, brisk and bluff. "I am pleased to see you looking so well recovered, Aramis. You will be off duty until Merlin passes you fit, and then on light duties until I pass you fit. Report to me three days from now and we'll assess."

And he was gone again.

"Business as usual, I see," Aramis remarked, finding this, somehow, more reassuring than anything else so far.

"Oh, the Captain was very definite about that, right from the start," said D'Artagnan. "We're to act as if nothing weird ever happened at all. As far as the world is concerned, you were captured by a madman who led us to a den of Satanists, but no actual magic was ever involved."

"It's for the best," said Athos. "The survivors were executed before anyone could query any words of lunacy they may have babbled, and the Cardinal has been called to answer searching questions of how such a terrible cult could have arisen in Paris without anyone ever suspecting a thing. The King and Queen were deeply shocked to learn of it, and have expressed concern for your swift recovery."

"The Queen knows?" The thought should not disturb him as it did.

"That the leader of a Satanic cult attempted to murder a Musketeer, yes, the precise circumstances, no," said Athos with an odd look on his face, and Aramis knew he'd caught his reaction and was puzzled by it, but hadn't the energy to dissimulate.

He yawned, drowsy but content, and Merlin promptly ushered all visitors out of the room to allow him to rest.

By the next morning, he was out of bed without too much fear of falling over, although the intense, bone-deep cold showed no sign of lifting. Layers of blankets helped.

Aramis sat in a cocoon of said blankets and watched as Merlin busied himself about the infirmary in a frenzy of cleaning and tidying, and understood what his friend couldn't quite bring himself to say.

"You're not staying, are you?"

Merlin stilled, broom in hand. "I can't."

"You could."

But Merlin shook his head. "No. I can't. I've done all I can here. You're safe now, or as safe as a soldier ever can be, and I am so happy you're here, Lancelot, living out the life you always should have had. But I can't stay and watch you live it. I've done it too many times already. In Camelot, I watched as everyone I loved grew old and died, one by one, while I lived on. And then the next generation, and the next. I can't do it again. I won't. I've watched you die twice already, the third time would be the last and I don't want to see it, whether next week or next month or fifty years from now. If I leave now, you will live forever in my mind, exactly as you are, you and all your friends."

Aramis understood. He regretted it, feeling already the loss of this last remaining link to the life he'd once had, but he understood. "Where will you go?"

"Haven't decided yet. Back to Avalon perhaps, it's been a while now and I try not to stay away too long, just in case. But I won't go until you're back on your feet."

"Will you take up teaching again?"

Merlin shrugged, a little too studiedly offhand. "It's an easy enough living, but if I do, I'll not be telling stories of Camelot, never again."

Bitterness entered his eyes now. Telling those stories had, Aramis knew, kept the memories alive for him all these years – and surely no one could have predicted where they would lead.

"It wasn't your fault. You couldn't have known."

"I should have known. I should have recognised what the boy was, been more careful. But then you would not be here now, so…well, but there's danger in it. I know that now. Perhaps it's time I let go of the past. Perhaps my future pupils will hear tales of the valiant Musketeers of Paris instead!"

Aramis smiled. "Perhaps."

Merlin delved into a pocket and drew out an amulet threaded on a leather cord. "This is for you," he said. "If you ever need me, use it. I'll come back."

Merlin slipped away quietly one night, without saying goodbye, and life at the garrison continued without him.

Light duties, for Aramis, inevitably meant long hours spent in the armoury, cleaning and repairing the Musketeers' stock of pistols and muskets, and it was here that Athos found him one afternoon.

"Let's see: one coat, no cloak, no blanket, and you're not shivering. You must be feeling better."

"Much," Aramis assured him, glancing up from his task with a grin.

Athos sat down. "The Queen contrived an audience alone with me today," he said.

"Oh?"

"She wished to enquire privately after your health." His face was blank, unreadable.

"Oh," Aramis said again, unable to decipher where this was leading, not quite daring to meet his friend's eyes, and deliberately not allowing himself to reflect on what this show of concern meant, because it could not mean anything. It was agreed.

"She was most solicitous. You seem to have made quite an impression."

"Well, what can I say?" he evaded.

Athos lifted an eyebrow. "That's just what I'd like to know. I've seen the way you look at her."

"I admire a beautiful face."

"And I have seen the way she looks at you."

A mischievous smirk escaped. "She has excellent taste."

"Aramis."

"What?"

"Should I be concerned?"

"Of course not," said Aramis, wondering anew what the Queen could possibly have said of him to provoke this interrogation.

Athos hesitated slightly, as if unsure whether or not to press. "Perhaps this partiality is particularly evident to me due to proximity, but it is not impossible that others should notice, and pass comment." He selected his next words with care. "You have a certain reputation, you know."

Aramis knew well the reputation he'd acquired during his sojourn in Paris, and cared little for it, having enjoyed himself thoroughly along the way. "You believe the Queen herself vulnerable to my charms? You flatter me, Athos."

It was meant as a joke, but fell flat even to his own ears as he remembered that night at the convent. _In another life, perhaps_.

Athos, it seemed, was remembering much the same occasion. "The Queen's fondness for you is plain to my eyes, and I recall observing a certain closeness between you at the convent, as we hid from the assassins." He hesitated again. "You guarded the Queen's bedchamber that night, did you not?"

"I did," Aramis lightly agreed. "All night."

"Tell me my concerns are unfounded."

They both were and they were not. Aramis could not lie to his friend.

"The Queen was very upset that night and could not sleep," he carefully said. "She wished for company and conversation. I sat with her, talked…"

"And nothing more?"

Athos held his eyes, searching and intent. Aramis had maintained the much greater secret of his past for many years, was an old hand at evasion, but he could not outright lie to his friend's face, not here, not now, after all they had been through together.

"There may have been a kiss…" he slowly admitted, and fought the urge to duck.

" _Aramis!_ " Athos jumped up, hurried to the door to check that no one was within earshot, glowered at him furiously, and hissed, "You kissed the Queen?"

"Technically, she kissed me."

"And then what?"

"And then nothing, I was a perfect gentleman, Athos – what do you take me for?"

Athos lifted a sceptical eyebrow, and Aramis suddenly knew that it was not his reputation in play here so much as that which legend had bestowed upon Lancelot, of which he'd learned a little from Porthos, and while he cared little for a reputation he'd fairly earned, to be judged for what Morgana had done both to him and to Gwen touched a nerve that was raw even now.

"You should not believe everything you read in stories, my friend," he warned.

"Tell me exactly what happened."

"I already have. The Queen wished for company, so we talked, and there was perhaps a dangerous moment, but it passed. She returned to her chamber and I guarded the door. That is all."

If looks could kill, he'd be laid out cold on the spot, he was sure.

"A kiss would be more than sufficient to condemn, you know," Athos said, and Aramis knew that, he remembered Gwen, that was why he'd stopped before it went too far, even though he'd wanted it, even though she'd wanted it, they'd stopped and nothing had happened.

He kept his tone deliberately light. "Well, if you don't tell…"

"If blatant partiality does not give you away," Athos countered, still glaring.

"A passing fancy," Aramis offered. "She will have a new preoccupation soon enough." And it stung, perhaps, but was nonetheless true – the birth of her child would most certainly see the end of their mutual dream.

Athos sighed and shook his head, exasperation and affection warring in his eyes. "It never ends with you, does it, Aramis?"

Feeling the end of the storm, Aramis allowed himself to relax. "Face it, my friend: you would be bored without me."

Athos snorted; it was the closest Aramis had ever known him come to laughing out loud. "Perhaps I would, at that," he conceded.

And life went on, just as it always did.

© J. B., September 2016


End file.
